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THE  EVOLUTION  OF 
THE  COUNTRY  COMMUNITY 


^^■ 


THE    EVOLUTION    OF 

THE    COUNTRY 

COMMUNITY 

A  STUDY  IN  RELIGIOUS  SOCIOLOGY 

BY 
WARREN  H.  WILSON 


THE  PILGRIM  PRESS 

BOSTON    NEW  YORK    CHICAGO 


Copyright,  1912, 
By  Luther  H.  Cakt 


THE    PILGRIM    PRESS 
BOSTON 


3V 
4.3  8 

W  6,9  •«' 

Cop-' 

TO 
MISS  ANNA  B.  TAFT 

WHO    FOUND   THE  WAT   OP 

RURAL  LEADERSHIP 

in  bervicb  on  the  neglected  bordehs  of 
New  England  Towns 


PREFACE 

The  significance  of  the  most  significant  things  is 
rarely  seized  at  the  moment  of  their  appearance. 
Years  or  generations  afterwards  hindsight  discovers 
what  foresight  could  not  see. 

It  is  possible,  I  fear  it  is  even  probable,  that  earnest 
and  intelligent  leaders  of  organized  religious  activity, 
like  thousands  of  the  rank  and  file  in  parish  work, 
will  not  immediately  see  the  bearings  and  realize 
the  full  importance  of  the  ideas  and  the  purposes 
that  are  clearly  set  forth  in  this  new  and  original 
book  by  my  friend  and  sometime  student.  Dr.  War- 
ren H.  Wilson.  That  fact  will  in  no  wise  prevent 
or  even  delay  the  work  which  these  ideas  and  pur- 
poses are  mapping  out  and  pushing  to  realization. 

The  Protestant  churches  have  completed  one  full 
and  rounded  period  of  their  existence.  The  age  of 
theology  in  which  they  played  a  conspicuous  part 
has  passed  away,  never  to  return.  The  world  has 
entered  into  the  full  swing  of  the  age  of  science  and 
practical  achievement.  What  the  work,  the  use- 
fulness, and  the  destiny  of  the  Protestant  churches 
shall  henceforth  be  will  depend  entirely  upon  their 
own  vision,  their  common  sense,  and  their  adapta- 
bility to  a  new  order  of  things.     Embodying  as  they 

[viil 


PREFACE 

do  resources,  organization,  the  devotion  and  the 
energy  of  earnest  minds,  they  are  in  a  position  to 
achieve  results  of  welhiigh  incalculable  value  if 
they  apply  themselves  diligently  and  wisely  to  the 
task  of  holding  communities  and  individuals  up  to 
the  high  standard  of  that  "Good  Life"  which  the 
most  gifted  social  philosopher  of  all  ages  told  us, 
more  than  two  thousand  years  ago,  is  the  object 
for  which  social  activities  and  institutions  exist. 

In  one  vast  field  of  our  social  territory  the  problem 
of  maintaining  the  good  life  has  become  peculiar 
in  its  conditions  and  difficult  in  the  extreme.  The 
rural  community  has  suffered  in  nearly  every  im- 
aginable way  from  the  rapid  and  rather  crude 
development  of  our  industrial  civilization.  The 
emigration  of  strong,  ambitious  men  to  the  towns, 
the  substitution  of  alien  labor  for  the  young  and 
sturdy  members  of  the  large  American  families  of 
other  days,  the  declining  birth  rate  and  the  disin- 
tegration of  a  hearty  and  cheerful  neighborhood 
life,  all  have  worked  together  to  create  a  problem 
of  the  rural  neighborhood,  the  country  school  and 
the  country  church  unique  in  its  difficulties,  some- 
times in  its  discouragements. 

To  deal  with  this  problem  two  things  are  unde- 
niably necessary.  There  must  be  a  thorough  exam- 
ination of  it,  a  complete  analysis  and  mastery  of  its 
factors  and  conditions.  The  social  survey  has  be- 
come as  imperative  for  the  country  pastor  as  the 
geological  survey  is  for  the  mining  engineer.     And 

[viii] 


PREFACE 

when  the  facts  and  conditions  are  known,  the  church 
must  resolutely  set  about  the  task  of  dealing  with 
them  in  the  practical  spirit  of  a  practical  age,  with- 
out too  much  attention  to  the  traditions  and  the 
handicaps  of  an  age  that  has  gone  by. 

It  would  not  be  possible,  I  think,  to  present  these 
two  aspects  of  the  problem  of  the  country  parish 
with  more  of  first  hand  knowledge,  or  with  more  of 
the  wisdom  that  is  born  of  sympathy  and  reverence 
for  all  that  is  good  in  both  the  past  and  the  present 
than  the  reader  will  find  in  Dr.  Wilson's  pages. 
I  welcome  and  commend  this  book  as  a  fine  product 
of  studies  and  labors  at  once  scientific  and  practical. 

Franklin  H.  Giddings. 


[\x] 


TABLE   OF  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

Introduction IX 

I    The  Pioneer 1 

II    The  Land  Farmer 18 

III    The  Exploiter 8« 

rV    The  Husbandman 48 

V    Exceptional  Communities 62 

VI    GETTiNa  A  LiviNQ 79 

VII    The  Community 91 

Vni     The  Margin  of  the  Communitt 108 

IX    Newcomers  in  the  Community 1SJ3 

X    Co-operation 142 

\    XI    Common  Schools 158 

>^^XII    RuR^L  Morality 171 

Xm    Recreation 189 

XIV    Common  Worship 208 


INTRODUCTION 

THE  church  and  the  school  are  the  eyes  of  the 
country  community.  They  serve  during 
the  early  development  of  the  community 
as  means  of  intelligence  and  help  to  develop  the 
social  consciousness,  as  well  as  to  connect  the  life 
within  the  community  with  the  world  outside.  They 
express  intelligence  and  feeling.  But  when  the 
community  has  come  to  middle  life,  even  though 
it  be  normally  developing,  the  eyes  fail.  They  are 
infallible  registers  of  the  coming  of  mature  years. 
At  this  time  they  need  a  special  treatment. 

Like  the  eyes,  the  country  church  and  country 
school  register  the  health  of  the  whole  organism. 
Whatever  affects  the  community  affects  the  church 
and  the  school.  The  changes  which  have  come  over 
the  face  of  social  life  in  the  country  record  themselves 
in  the  church  and  the  school.  These  institutions 
register  the  transformations  in  social  life,  they  in- 
dicate health  and  they  give  warning  of  decay.  In 
a  few  instances  the  church  or  school  require  the 
attention  of  the  expert  even  in  the  infancy  of  the 
community,  just  as  the  eyes  of  a  child  sometimes 
need  the  oculist,  but  with  normal  growth  the  expert 

[xiii] 


INTRODUCTION 

is  called  in  for  problems  which  have  to  do  with 
maturity. 

In  these  chapters  the  center  of  attention  will  be 
the  church,  regarded  as  an  institution  for  building 
and  organizing  country  life.  It  is  not  the  thought 
of  the  writer  that  the  church  be  treated  in  ecclesi- 
astical terms.  It  is  rather  as  a  register  of  the  well- 
being  of  the  community  that  the  church  is  here 
studied.  ^The  condition  of  the  church  is  regarded 
as  an  index  of  the  social  and  economic  condition 
of  the  people.  The  sources  of  religion  are  believed 
by  the  writer  to  be  in  the  vital  experiences  of  the 
people  themselves.  In  the  process  of  religious 
experience  the  church,  the  Bible,  the  ministry  and 
other  religious  methods  and  organizations  are  means 
of  disciplining  the  forces  of  religion,  but  they  are 
not  the  sources  of  religion. 

The  church  in  the  country  above  all  other  insti- 
tutions should  see  what  concerns  country  people  as 
a  whole.  If  vision  be  not  given  to  the  church, 
country  people  will  suffer,)  The  Christian  churches 
are  rich  in  the  experience  of  country  people.  The 
Bible  is  written  about  a  "Holy  Land."  The  exhor- 
tations of  Scripture,  especially  of  the  Old  Testament, 
are  devoted  to  constructive  sociology,  the  building 
and  organizing  of  an  agricultural  people  in  an  Asiatic 
country.  Many  of  the  problems  are  oriental,  but 
some  of  them  are  precisely  the  same  as  are  today 
agitating  the  American  farmer.  Religion  is  the 
highest  valuation  set  upon  life,  and  the  country 

[xivl 


INTRODUCTION 

church  should  have  a  vision  of  the  present  meaning 
as  well  as  the  future  development  of  couintry  life 
in  America.; 

fThe  country  church  ought  to  inspire.  It  is  the 
business  of  other  agencies,  and  particularly  of  the 
schools  and  colleges,  to  impart  practical  and  economic 
aims.  But  these  will  not  satisfy  country  people. 
I  No  section  of  modern  life  is  so  dependent  upon  ideal- 
ism as  are  the  people  who  live  in  the  country^  Mere 
cash  prosperity  puts  an  end  to  residence  in  most 
country  communities.  Commercial  success  leads 
toward  the  city.  The  religious  leaders  alone  have 
the  duty  of  inspiring  country  people  with  ideals 
higher  than  the  commercial.  It  remains  for  the 
church  in  particular  to  inspire  with  social  idealism. 
Education  seems  hopelessly  individualistic.  The 
schoolmaster  can  see  only  personalities  to  be  de- 
veloped. It  remains  for  the  preacher  to  develop 
a  kingdom  and  a  commonwealth.  His  ideals  have 
been  those  of  an  organized  society.  The  tradition 
which  he  inherits  from  the  past  is  saturated  with 
family,  tribal  and  national  remembrances.  His 
exhortations  for  the  future  look  to  organized  social 
life  in  the  world  to  come.  He  should  know  how  to 
construct  ideals  out  of  modern  life,  which  are  organic 
and  social. 

Beyond  these  two  duties  I  am  not  sure  that  the 
churches  in  the  country  have  exceptional  function. 
The  writer  is  not  a  teacher,  and  what  is  said  in  this 
book  about  the  country  school  is  said  solely  because 

[xvl 


INTRODUCTION 

of  the  dependence  of  all  else  upon  this  institution. 
The  patient,  detailed  and  extensively  constructive 
work  in  the  country  must  be  done  by  the  educator. 
It  is  well  for  the  church  to  recognize  its  limits,  and 
to  magnify  its  own  function  within  them.  Vision 
and  inspiration  are  the  duty  of  religious  leaders. 
The  application  of  these  in  a  variety  of  ways  to  the 
generations  of  young  people  in  the  country  is  an 
educational  task  which  the  church  can  do  only  in 
part. 

fBut  the  great  necessity  of  arousing  the  church  at 
tne  present  time  to  its  duty  as  a  builder  of  communi- 
ties in  the  country  is  this.  In  all  parts  of  the 
United  States  country  life  is  furnished  with  churches.^ 
Perhaps  not  in  sujQScient  degree  in  some  localities, 
but  in  general  the  task  of  religious  organization  is 
done,  f'' These  religious  societies  hold  the  key  to  the 
problem  of  country  life.  If  they  oppose  modern 
socialized  ideals  in  the  country,  these  ideals  cannot 
penetrate  the  country.  If  the  church  undertake 
constructive  social  service  in  the  country,  the  task 
will  be  done.  The  church  can  oppose  effectively; 
it  can  support  eflBciently.  This  situation .  lays  a 
vast  responsibility  upon  all  Christian  churches, 
especially  upon  those  that  have  an  educated  ministry ; 
for  the  future  development  of  the  country  community 
as  a  good  place  in  which  to  live  depends  upon  the 
country  church.. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  whether  a  popula- 
tion can  be  improved  and  whether  a  community  can 

[xvi] 


INTRODUCTION 

be  saved.  The  pages  that  are  to  follow  will  discuss 
these  questions.  It  is  the  writer's  belief  that  a 
population  can  be  improved  by  social  service,  that 
the  community  is  the  unit  in  which  such  service 
should  be  rendered  in  the  country,  and  that  by  the 
vision  and  inspiration  of  the  church  in  the  country, 
this  service  is  conditioned.  He  believes  with  those 
who  are  leading  in  the  service  among  the  poor  in 
the  great  cities  that  the  time  has  come  when  we  have 
suflBcient  intelligence  to  understand  the  life  of  coun- 
try people,  in  order  to  deal  with  the  causes  of  human 
action;  we  have  sufficient  resources  wherewith  to 
endow  the  needed  agencies  for  the  reconstruction 
of  country  life;  and  we  have  a  sufficient  devotion 
among  men  of  intelligence  and  of  means  to  direct 
this  constructive  social  service  toward  the  entire 
well-being  of  country  people  and  of  the  whole 
commonwealth . 

The  writer  is  indebted  for  help  in  the  prepara- 
tion of  this  book  to  Miss  Florence  M.  Lane,  Miss 
Martha  Wilson  and  to  Miss  Anna  B.  Taft,  without 
whose  assistance  and  criticism  the  chapters  could 
not  have  been  prepared  and  without  whose  encour- 
agement they  would  not  have  been  undertaken; 
also  to  his  teachers  in  Columbia  University,  espe- 
cially Professors  Franklin  H.  Giddings  and  John 
Bates  Clark  whose  teachings  in  the  Social  Sciences 
furnish  the  beginning  of  a  new  method  in  investi- 
gating religious  experiences. 

New  York,  July,  1912. 

[xvii] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE 
COMMUNITY 


TIIE  PIONEER 

THE  earliest  settlers  of  the  American  wilderness 
had  a  struggle  very  different  from  our  own, 
who  live  in  the  twentieth  century.  Their 
economic  experience  determined  their  character. 
They  appear  to  us  at  this  distance  to  have  common 
characteristics,  habits  and  reactions  upon  life;  in 
which  they  differ  from  all  who  in  easier  times  follow 
them.  They  have  more  in  common  with  one  another 
than  they  have  in  common  with  us.  They  differ 
less  from  one  another  than  they  differ  from  the 
modem  countryman.  The  pioneer  life  produced  the 
pioneer  type. 

To  this  type  all  their  ways  of  life  correspond. 
They  hunted,  fought,  dressed,  traded,  worshipped 
in  their  own  way.  Their  houses,  churches,  stores 
and  schools  were  built,  not  as  they  would  prefer, 
but  as  the  necessities  of  their  life  required.  Their 
conomunities  were  pioneer  communities:  their  relig- 
ious  habits   were   suitable   to   frontier   experience. 

2  [1] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

Modern  men  would  find  much  to  condemn  in  thdr 
ways:  and  they  would  find  our  typical  reactions 
smprising,  even  wicked.  But  each  conforms  to 
type,  and  obeys  economic  necessity. 

There  have  been  four  economic  types  in  American 
agriculture.  These  have  succeeded  one  another  as 
the  rural  economy  has  gone  through  successive 
transformations.  They  have  been  the  pioneer,  the 
land  farmer,  the  exploiter  and  the  husbandman. 
Prof.  J.  B.  Ross  of  Lafayette,  Ind.,  has  clearly  stated^ 
the  periods  by  which  these  types  are  separated  form 
one  another.  It  remains  for  us  to  consider  the  com- 
munities and  the  churches  which  have  taken  form 
in  accordance  with  these  successive  types. 

Prof.  Ross  has  spoken  only  of  the  Middle  West. 
With  a  slight  modification,  the  same  might  be  said 
of  the  Eastern  States,  because  the  rural  economy 
of  the  Middle  West  is  inherited  from  the  East. 
His  statement  made  of  this  succession  of  economic 
types  should  be  quoted  in  full: 

"The  agrarian  occupation  of  the  Middle  West 
divides  itself  into  three  periods.  The  first,  which 
extends  from  the  beginnings  of  immigration  to  about 
the  year  1835,  is  of  significance  chiefly  because  of  the 
type  of  immigrants  who  preempted  the  soil  and  the 
nature  of  their  occupancy.  The  second  period, 
extending  from  1835  to  1890,  had  as  its  chief  ob- 
jective the  enrichment  of  the  group  fife.     It  was  the 

1 "  The  Agrarian  Changes  in  the  Middle  West,"  by  J.  B.  Ross,  in  Ameri- 
can Journal  of  Economics,  December,  1910. 

[2] 


THE   PIONEER 

period  in  which  large  houses  and  commodious  bams 
were  erected,  and  in  which  the  church  and  the  school 
were  the  centers  of  social  activity.  The  third 
period,  which  began  about  the  year  1890,  and  which 
is  not  yet  complete,  is  marked  by  a  transition  from 
the  era  of  resident  proprietors  of  the  land  to  that  of 
non-resident  proprietors,  and  by  the  fact  that  the 
chief  attention  of  the  land  owners  is  paid  to  the 
improvement  of  the  soil  by  fertilization  and  drainage 
and  to  the  increasing  of  facilities  for  communication 
and  for  the  marketing  of  farm  products." 

Each  of  these  types  created  by  the  habits  of  the 
people  in  getting  their  living,  had  its  own  kind  of  a 
community,  so  that  we  have  had  pioneer,  land  farmer, 
exploiter  and  husbandman  communities.  Indeed 
all  these  types  are  now  found  contemporaneous  with 
one  another.  We  have  also  had  successive  churches 
built  by  the  pioneer,  by  the  land  farmer,  by  the 
exploiter  and  by  the  husbandman.  The  present 
state  of  the  country  church  and  community  is  ex- 
plained best  by  saying  that  it  is  an  effect  of  transi- 
tion from  the  pioneer  and  the  land  farmer  types  of 
church  and  community  to  the  exploiter  and  husband- 
man types. 

The  pioneer  lived  alone.  He  placed  his  cabin 
without  regard  to  social  experience.  In  the  woods 
his  axe  alone  was  heard  and  on  the  prairie  the  smoke 
from  his  sod  house  was  sometimes  answered  by  no 
other  smoke  in  the  whole  horizon.  He  worked  and 
fought  and  pondered  alone.    Self-preservation  was 

[3] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

the  struggle  of  his  life,  and  personal  salvation  was 
his  aspiration  in  prayer.  His  relations  with  his 
fellows  were  purely  democratic  and  highly  inde- 
pendent. The  individual  man  with  his  family  lived 
alone  in  the  face  of  man  and  God.  The  following  is 
a  description  by  an  eye  witness  of  such  a  community 
which  preserves  in  a  mountain  country  the  conditions 
of  pioneer  life.^ 

"It  is  pitiful  to  see  the  lack  of  co-operation  among 
them.  It  is  most  evident  in  business  but  makes 
itself  known  in  the  children,  too.  I  regard  it  as 
one  reason  why  they  do  not  play;  they  have  been  so 
isolated  that  they  do  not  allow  the  social  instinct 
of  their  natures  to  express  itself.  This,  of  course, 
is  all  unconsciously  done  on  their  part.  However, 
one  cannot  live  long  among  them  without  finding 
out  that  they  are  characterized  by  an  intense  indi- 
vidualism. It  applies  to  all  that  they  do,  and  to 
it  may  be  attached  the  blame  for  all  the  things  which 
they  lack  or  do  wrongfully.  If  a  man  has  been 
wronged,  he  must  personally  right  the  wrong.  If  a 
man  runs  for  office,  people  support  him  as  a  man  and 
no  questions  are  asked  as  to  his  platform.  If  a 
man  conducts  a  store,  people  buy  from  him  because 
he  sells  the  goods,  not  because  the  goods  commend 
themselves  to  them.  And  so  by  common  consent 
and  practise,  the  individual  interests  are  first. 
Naturally  this  leads  to  many  cases  of  lawlessness. 

« Rev.  Nonnan  C.  Schenck. 
[4] 


THE   PIONEER 

The  game  of  some  of  our  people  is  to  evade  the  law; 
of  others,  to  ignore  the  law  entirely." 

The  pioneer  had  in  his  religion  but  one  essential 
doctrine, — the  salvation  of  the  soul.  His  church 
had  no  other  concern  than  to  save  individuals  from 
the  wrath  to  come.  It  had  just  one  method,  an 
annual  revival  of  religion. 

The  loneliness  of  the  pioneer's  soul  is  an  effect 
of  his  bodily  loneliness.  The  vast  outdoors  of  nature 
forest  or  prairie  or  mountain,  made  him  silent  and 
introspective  even  when  in  company.  The  variety 
of  impacts  of  nature  upon  his  bodily  life  made  him 
resourceful  and  self-reliant;  and  upon  his  soul  re- 
sulted in  a  reflective,  melancholy  egotism.  His 
religion  must  therefore  begin  and  end  in  personal 
salvation.  It  was  a  message,  an  emotion,  a  struggle, 
and  a  peace. 

The  second  great  characteristic  of  the  pioneer  was 
his  emotional  tension.  His  impulses  were  strong 
and  changeable.  The  emotional  instability  of  the 
pioneer  grew  out  of  his  mixture  of  occupations.  It 
was  necessary  for  him  to  practise  all  the  trades.  In 
the  original  pioneer  settlement  this  was  literally  true. 
In  later  periods  of  the  settlement  of  the  land  the 
pioneer  still  had  many  occupations  and  representa- 
tive sections  of  the  country  even  until  the  present 
time  exhibit  a  mixture  of  occupations  among  coun- 
try people  most  unlike  the  ordered  life  of  the  East- 
ern States.  Adam  Smith  in  "Wealth  of  Nations" 
makes  clear  that  the  practise  of  many  occupations 

[5[ 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

induces  emotional  conditions.  Between  each  two 
economic  processes  there  is  generated  for  the  worker 
at  varied  trades  a  languor,  which  burdens  and  con- 
fuses the  work  of  the  man  who  practises  many  trades. 
This  langour  is  the  source  of  the  emotional  instability 
of  the  pioneer. 

The  pioneer's  method  of  bridging  the  gap  between 
his  many  occupations  was  simple.  When  he  had 
been  hunting  he  found  it  hard  to  go  to  plowing:  and 
if  plowing,  on  the  same  day  to  turn  to  tanning  or  to 
mending  a  roof.  When  the  pioneer  had  spent  an 
hour  in  bartering  with  a  neighbor  he  found  it  dif- 
ficult to  turn  himself  to  the  shoeing  of  a  horse  or  the 
clearing  of  land.  For  this  new  effort  his  expedient 
was  alcohol.  He  took  a  drink  of  rum  as  a  means  of 
forcing  himself  to  the  new  occupation.  The  result 
is  that  alcoholic  liquors  occupy  a  large  place  in  the 
economy  of  every  such  pioneer  people. 

In  the  mountain  regions  of  the  South,  where  the 
pioneer  remains  as  an  arrested  type,  the  rum  jug 
occupies  the  same  place  in  the  economy  of  the 
countryman  as  it  occupied  in  the  early  settlements 
of  the  United  States  generally.  These  "contempo- 
rary ancestors"  of  ours  in  the  Appalachian  region 
have  all  the  marks  of  the  pioneer.  Their  simple 
life,  their  varied  occupations,  and  the  relative  inde- 
pendence of  the  community  and  household,  sufficient 
unto  themselves,  present  a  picture  of  the  earlier 
American  conditions.    It  is  obvious  among  them  that 

[6] 


THE   PIONEER 

the  emotional  condition  of  the  pioneer  grew  out  of 
his  economy  and  extended  itself  into  his  church. 

This  emotional  instability  of  the  pioneer  shows 
itself  in  his  social  life.  The  well  known  feuds  of 
the  mountain  people  exhibit  this  condition.  Feeling 
is  at  once  violent  and  impulsive.  The  very  reserve 
of  these  unsmiling  and  serious  people  is  an  emotional 
state,  for  the  meager  diet  and  heavy  continued 
strains  of  their  economic  life  poorly  supply  and  easily 
exhaust  vitality. 

The  frontier  church  exhibited  emotional  variability. 
It  expressed  itself  in  the  pioneer's  one  method; 
namely,  an  annual  revival  of  religion.  In  the  pioneer 
churches  there  were  few  or  no  Sunday  schools  or 
other  societies.  In  those  regions  in  which  the  pio- 
neer has  remained  the  type  of  economic  life  Sunday 
schools  do  not  thrive.  Societies  for  young  people, 
for  men,  women  and  children  do  not  there  exist. 
The  church  is  a  place  only  for  preaching.  Religion 
consists  of  a  message  whose  use  is  to  excite  emotion. 
Preaching  is  had  as  often  as  possible,  but  not  neces- 
sarily once  a  week.  Essential,  however,  to  the 
pioneer's  organization  of  his  churches  is  a  periodical 
if  possible  an  annual,  revival  of  religion.  The 
means  used  at  this  time  are  the  announcement  of  a 
gospel  message  and  the  arousing  of  emotion  in  re- 
sponse to  this  message.  There  is  little  application 
of  religious  imperative  to  the  details  of  life.  There 
is  no  recognition  of  social  life,  because  the  pioneer 
economy  is  lonely  and  individual.     The  whole  pro- 

[7] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

cess  of  religion  consists  in  "coming  through**:  in 
other  words,  the  procuring  of  an  individual  and 
highly  personal  experience  of  emotion. 

"Beneath  the  surface  of  life  in  these  people  so 
conservative,  and  so  indifferent  to  change  as  it  is, 
there  runs  a  strain  of  intense  emotionaUsm.  When 
storms  disturb  the  calm  exterior,  the  mad  waves 
lash  and  beat  and  roar.  And  in  religion  this  is  most 
apparent.  With  them  emotionalism  and  religion 
are  almost  interchangeable  quantities, — if  they  are 
not  identical.^ 

"It  is  in  the  revival  service  that  you  see  the  heart 
of  the  stolid  mountain  man  unmasked.  The  local 
mountain  preachers  know  this  fact  well  and  use  it 
with  great  effect.  A  word  must  be  said  about  these 
men  who  work  all  through  the  week  alongside  of  their 
fellows  and  preach  to  them  on  Sunday.  In  some 
places  there  is  a  custom  of  holding  service  on  Satur- 
day and  Sunday.  These  men  have  generally  *come 
through* — a  term  used  to  describe  the  process  be- 
ginning with  *  mourning'  and  continuing  through 
repenting  and  being  saved.  And  generally  they  are 
men  of  personality.  They  have  a  certain  power 
with  men,  anyway,  and  they  are  keen  to  see  the 
effect  of  things  on  their  audiences.  Some  of  them 
have  learned  to  read  the  Bible  after  they  have  been 
converted.  It  is  not  so  much  what  they  say  that 
counts.  If  people  looked  for  that  they  would  go 
away  unfilled.     But  they  have  another  thing  in  mind. 

>  Rev.  Norman  C.  Schenck. 
[8] 


THE    PIONEER 

They  want  to  feel  right.  They  go  to  church  occas- 
ionally during  revival  drought,  but  always  during 
revival  plenty.  They  go  to  get  *  revived  up.*  The 
preacher  who  has  the  best  voice  is  the  best  preacher. 
He  sways  his  audience.  The  more  ignorant  he  is, 
the  better,  for  then  the  Spirit  of  God  is  not  hindered 
by  the  wisdom  of  man.  The  spirit  comes  upon  him 
when  he  enters  the  pulpit.  He  speaks  through  him 
to  the  waiting  congregation.  Of  course  they  do 
not  know  what  he  is  saying  for  the  man  makes  too 
much  noise.  But  they  begin  to  feel  that  this  is 
indeed  the  place  where  religion  can  be  found  and 
where  it  is  being  distributed  among  the  people. 

"Generally  revivals  occur  as  they  have  always 
done,  about  three  times  a  year.  At  these  services 
the  method  requires  that  exhorters  should  be  pres- 
ent and  perform.  Several  do  so  at  the  same  time. 
The  confusion  is  great  but  the  people  breathe  an 
atmosphere  that  begins  to  infect  them.  Sooner  or 
later  weeping  women  are  in  the  arms  of  some  others' 
husbands  begging  them  to  come  to  the  mourning 
bench.  Young  girls  single  out  the  boys  that  they 
like  best  and  affectionately  implore  them  to  begin 
the  Christian  life.  All  the  time  the  choir  is  singing 
a  swinging  revival  hymn;  the  preacher  is  standing 
over  his  audience  shouting  *Get  busy,  sinners,'  and 
two  or  three  boys  are  scurrying  back  and  forth  carry- 
ing water  to  the  thirsty  ones,  while  little  groups  of 
the  faithful  are  hovering  over  a  penitent,  smothering 
sinner,  trying  to  *pull  her  through.'     During  this 

[91 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

kind  of  a  meeting  which  I  attended  at  one  time  a 
woman  *got  happy*  and  went  around  slapping  every- 
one she  could  get  her  hand  on,  and  skipping  like  a 
schoolgirl." 

The  pioneer  church  has  not  fully  passed  away. 
Its  one  doctrine  and  its  one  method  have  still  a  place 
in  the  more  elaborate  life  of  the  modern  church. 
Like  the  rlim  jug  which  is  preserved  for  medicinal 
purposes,  the  revival  has  a  use  in  the  pathology 
of  modern  church  life.  The  doctrine  of  personal 
salvation  which  is  of  chief  concern,  in  the  ministry 
to  the  adolescent  population  ^  of  the  modern  church, 
IS  just  as  vital  as  ever;  though  it  is  not  the  only 
doctrine  of  the  church  of  the  husbandman,  which 
has  come  in  the  country. 

A  relic  of  the  pioneer  days  is  the  custom  known  as 
the  "Group  System."  By  this  a  preacher  comes 
to  a  church  once  a  month,  or  twice,  and  preaches  a 
sermon,  returning  promptly  to  his  distant  place 
of  residence.  The  early  settlers  of  this  country 
who  originated  this  system  were  lonely  and  individ- 
ualized. They  believed  that  religion  consisted  in  a 
mere  message  of  salvation,  so  that  all  they  required 
was  to  hear  from  a  preacher  once  in  a  while. 

But  the  districts  in  which  the  "Group  System" 
is  used  have  grown  beyond  this  religious  satisfaction 
and  the  "Group  System"  no  longer  renders  adequate 
religious   service.     Religion   has   become  a  greater 

1  "Youth,"  by  G.  Stanley  HaU. 
[10] 


THE   PIONEER 

ministry  than  can  be  rendered  in  the  form  of  a  mes- 
sage, however  well  preached. 

Like  all  outworn  customs,  this  one  breeds  abuses 
as  it  grows  older.  Its  value  having  passed  away, 
it  has  forms  of  offensiveness.  In  sections  of  Mis- 
souri where  the  farmers  are  rich  they  say  with  con- 
tempt, "None  of  the  ministers  lives  in  the  country." 
The  "Group  System,'*  in  a  territory  of  Missouri 
comprising  forty-one  churches,  organizes  its  forces 
as  follows:  these  forty-one  churches  have  nine  min- 
isters who  live  in  five  communities  and  go  out  two 
miles,  ten  miles,  sometimes  thirty  miles,  in  various 
directions,  for  a  fractional  service  to  other  commu- 
nities than  those  in  which  they  live.  Each  of  the 
two  big  towns  has  more  than  one  minister  and  none 
of  the  country  churches  has  a  pastor.  Thus  the 
value  of  the  family  life  of  the  preacher  is  cancelled. 
After  all  this  organization  and  division  of  the  men 
into  small  fractions  among  the  churches,  there  are 
sixteen  of  these  churches  which  have  neither  pastor 
nor  preacher. 

This  **Group  System"  can  be  improved,  as  is  done 
in  Tennessee,  by  the  shortening  of  the  journeys 
which  must  be  made  by  the  minister  from  his  home 
to  his  preaching  point.  Nevertheless,  it  gives  to  the 
country  community  only  a  fraction  of  a  man's  time. 
He  can  interpret  religion  in  only  three  ways;  in  the 
sermon,  the  funeral  service  and  the  wedding.  Un- 
fortunately mankind  has  to  do  many  other  things 
besides  getting  married,  buried  or  preached  at. 

fill 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

The  country  community  needs  a  pastor.  It  is 
better  for  the  minister  who  preaches  to  the  country 
to  live  in  the  country.  There  are  some  parts  which 
cannot  support  a  pastor,  but  the  minister  to  country 
churches  should  know  the  daily  round  of  country 
life.  Religion  can  never  be  embodied  in  a  sermon; 
and  when  religion  comes  to  be  limited  to  a  formal 
act  it  is  tinged  with  suspicion  in  the  eyes  of  most 
men.  Sermons  and  funerals  and  weddings  become 
to  country  people  the  windows  by  which  religion 
flies  out  of  the  community.  Especially  among 
farmers,  religion  is  a  matter  of  every-day  life.  What 
religion  the  farmer  has  grows  out  of  his  yearly 
struggle  with  the  soil  and  with  the  elements.  His 
belief  in  God  is  a  belief  in  Providence.  His  God 
is  the  creator  of  the  sun  and  the  seasons,  the  wind 
and  the  rain.  The  man  who  does  not  with  him 
share  these  experiences  cannot  long  interpret  them 
for  him  in  terms  of  scripture  or  of  church. 

The  policy  of  the  newer  territories  of  the  church 
must  be  to  translate  the  "Group  System"  into 
pastorates.  The  long  range  group  service  should  be 
transformed  into  short  and  compact  group  minis- 
try; the  pastor  should  live  in  the  country  community 
and  the  length  of  his  journey  should  never  be  longer 
than  his  horse  can  drive.  A  group  of  churches  which 
are  not  more  than  ten  miles  apart  constitute  a 
country  parish.  Some  few  active  ministers  are 
able  to  make  thirty  to  forty  miles  on  horseback 
on  a  Sunday,  among  a  scattered  people.     This  is 

[12] 


THE   PIONEER 

well,  but  as  soon  as  the  railroad  becomes  an  essential 
factor  in  the  monthly  visit  of  ministers  to  the  coun- 
try, religion  passes  out  of  that  community. 

The  service  of  the  country  preacher,  in  other  words, 
is  essentially  confined  to  the  country  community, 
and  the  bounds  of  the  country  community  are 
determined  by  the  length  of  the  team  haul  or  horse- 
back ride  to  which  that  population  is  accustomed. 
Within  these ,  bounds  religious  life  and  expression 
are  possible.  Immersed  in  his  own  community, 
the  life  of  the  minister  and  of  his  family  attain  im- 
mediate religious  value.  The  whole  influence  of 
the  minister's  home,  the  service  of  his  wife  to  the 
people,  which  is  often  greater  than  his  own,  and  the 
development  of  his  children's  life,  these  are  all  of 
religious  use  to  his  people. 

A  recent  speaker  upon  this  matter  said,  "I  doubt 
if  even  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  could  have  saved  this 
world  if  he  had  come  down  to  it  only  once  in  two 
weeks  on  Saturday  and  gone  back  on  Monday 
morning." 

The  pastor,  then,  is  the  type  of  community  builder 
needed  in  the  country.  The  pastor  works  with  a 
maximum  of  sincerity,  while  sincerity  may  in  preach- 
ing be  reduced  to  the  lowest  terms.  He  is  in  constant, 
intimate,  personal  contact.  The  preacher  is  dealing 
with  theories  and  ideals  not  always  rooted  in  local 
experiences.  The  pastor  lives  the  life  of  the  people. 
He  is  known  to  them  and  their  lives  are  known 
to  him.    The  preacher  may  perform  his  oratorical 

[13] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

ministry  through  knowledge  of  populations  long 
since  dead  and  by  description  of  foreign  and  alien 
countries.  It  is  possible  to  preach  acceptably  about 
kingdoms  that  have  not  yet  existed.  But  the  work 
of  a  pastor  is  the  development  of  ideals  out  of 
situations.  It  is  his  business  to  inspire  the  daily 
life  of  his  people  with  high  idealism  and  to  construct 
those  aspirations  and  imaginations  out  of  the  daily 
work  of  mankind,  which  are  proper  to  that  work  and 
essential  to  that  people. 

An  illustrious  example  of  such  ministry  is  that 
of  John  Frederick  Oberlin,^  whose  pastorate  at 
Waldersbach  in  the  Vosges  consisted  of  a  service  to 
his  people  in  their  every  need,  from  the  building 
of  roads  to  the  organization  and  teaching  of  schools. 
It  would  have  been  impossible  for  Oberlin  to  have 
served  these  people  through  preaching  alone.  Being 
a  mature  community,  indeed  old  in  suffering  and 
in  poverty,  they  needed  the  ministry  of  a  pastor, 
and  this  service  he  rendered  them  in  the  immersion 
of  his  life  with  theirs,  and  the  bearing  of  their 
burdens,  even  the  most  material  and  economic 
burden  of  the  community,  upon  his  shoulders. 

The  passing  away  of  pioneer  days  discredits  the 
ministry  of  mere  preaching,  through  increasing  vari- 
ation of  communities,  families  and  individuals. 
The  preacher's  message  is  not  widely  varied.  It  is 
the  interpreting  of  tradition,  gospel  and  dogma. 
His  sources  can  all  be  neatly  arranged  on  a  book 

1  Story  of  John  Frederick  Oberlin  by  Augustus  Field  Beard,  1909. 
[141 


THE    PIONEER 

shelf.  One  suspects  that  the  greater  the  preacher, 
the  fewer  his  books.  On  the  contrary,  the  pastor's 
work  is  necessitated  by  growing  differences  of  his 
people.  He  must  be  all  things  to  many  different 
kinds  of  men.  In  the  country  community  this 
intimate  intercourse  and  varying  sympathy  take 
him  through  a  wider  range  of  human  experience 
than  in  a  more  classified  community.  He  must 
plow  with  the  plowman,  and  hunt  with  the  hunter, 
and  converse  with  the  seamstress,  be  glad  with  the 
wedding  company  and  bear  the  burden  of  sorrow  in 
the  day  of  death.  Moreover,  nobody  outside  a 
country  community  knows  how  far  a  family  can  go 
in  the  path  to  poverty  and  still  live.  No  one  knows 
how  eccentric  and  peculiar,  how  reserved  and 
whimsical  the  life  of  a  household  may  be,  in  the 
country  community,  unless  he  has  lived  as  neighbor 
and  friend  to  such  a  household.  The  preacher 
cannot  know  this.  Not  all  the  experience  of  the 
world  is  written  even  in  the  Bible.  The  spirit  shall 
"teach  us  things  to  come."  It  is  the  pastor  who 
learns  these  things  by  his  daily  observation  of  the 
lives  of  men. 

The  communities  themselves  in  the  country  differ 
widely,  even  in  conformity  to  given  types,  and  when 
all  is  said  by  the  general  student,  the  pastor  has  the 
knowledge  of  his  own  community.  It  belongs  pe- 
culiarly to  him.  No  one  else  can  ever  know  it  and 
there  are  no  two  communities  alike.  In  the  intense 
localism  of  a  community,   its   religious  history  is 

[15] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

hidden  away  and  its  future  is  involved.  The  man 
who  shall  touch  the  springs  of  the  community's 
life  must  know  these  local  conditions  with  the  inti- 
mate detail  which  only  he  commands  who  daily 
goes  up  and  down  its  paths.  This  man  is  the 
pastor.  Except  the  country  physician,  no  other 
living  man  is  such  an  observer  as  he. 

The  end  of  the  pioneer  days  means,  therefore, 
to  reHgious  people,  the  establishment  of  the  pastor- 
ate. The  religious  leader  for  the  pioneer  was  the 
preacher,  but  the  community  which  clings  to  preach- 
ing as  a  satisfactory  and  final  religious  ministry 
is  retrograde.  In  this  retarding  of  reHgious  progress 
is  the  secret  of  the  decline  of  many  communities. 
The  great  work  of  ministering  to  them  is  in  sup- 
planting the  preacher,  who  renders  but  a  fractional 
service  to  the  people,  by  a  pastor  whose  preaching 
is  an  announcement  of  the  varied  ministry  in  which 
he  serves  as  the  cure  of  souls. 

The  pioneer  days  are  gone.  Only  in  the  Southern 
Appalachian  region  are  there  arrested  communities 
in  which,  in  our  time,  the  ways  of  our  American 
ancestors  are  seen.  The  community  builder  cannot 
change  the  type  of  his  people.  He  can  only  wait 
for  the  change,  and  enable  his  people  to  conform  to 
the  new  type.  For  this  process  new  industries, 
new  ways  of  getting  a  living  are  necessary.  The 
teacher  or  pastor  can  do  something  to  guide  his 
people  in  the  selection  of  constructive  instead  of 
destructive  industry. 

[16] 


THE   PIONEER 

In  East  Tennessee  and  in  the  mountain  counties 
of  North  Carolina  lumbering  industries  are  for  the 
time  being  employing  the  people.  The  result  will 
be  a  deeper  impoverishment;  for  the  timber  is  the 
people's  greatest  source  of  actual  and  potential 
wealth.  The  leaders  of  the  mountain  people  should 
teach  reforestation  with  a  view  to  maintaining  the 
people's  future  wealth. 

In  a  mountain  county  of  Kentucky  a  minister 
seeing  that  his  people  needed  a  new  economic  life, 
before  they  could  receive  the  religious  life  of  the 
new  type,  organized  an  annual  county  fair.  To 
this  be  brought,  with  the  help  of  outside  friends,  a 
breed  of  hogs  better  than  his  mountain  people 
knew.  He  cultivated  competition  in  local  industries, 
weaving  and  cooking;  and  started  his  people  on  the 
path  of  economic  success  of  a  new  type. 

In  conclusion,  the  pioneer  was  individuaUstic  and 
emotional.  These  traits  were  caused  by  his  eco- 
nomic experience.  While  that  experience  lasted, 
he  could  be  made  no  other  sort  of  man  than  this. 
To  this  type  his  home  and  his  business  Ufe  and 
his  church  conformed.  Within  these  characteris- 
tics the  eflficiency  of  his  social  life  was  to  be  found. 


171 


n 

THE  LAND  FARMER 

I  SHALL  use  the  term  land  farmer  to  describe 
the  man  who  tilled  the  soil  in  all  parts  of  the 
country  after  pioneer  days.  He  is  usually 
called  simply  the  farmer.  This  is  the  type  with 
which  we  are  most  familiar  in  our  present  day 
literature  and  in  dramatic  representations  of  the 
country.  The  land  farmer,  or  farmer,  is  the  typical 
countryman  who  in  the  Middle  West  about  1835 
succeeded  the  pioneer,  and  about  1890  was  followed 
by  the  exploiter  of  the  land. 

In  the  Eastern  States  pioneer  days  ended  before 
1835.  The  land  farmer  was  the  prevailing  type 
throughout  New  England,  New  York,  New  Jersey 
and  Pennsylvania  as  early  as  1800.  In  the  South 
the  contemporary  of  the  land  farmer  was  the  planter 
or  slave  holder.  The  modified  type  in  the  South 
was  due  to  an  economic  difference.  The  labor  prob- 
lem was  solved  in  the  South  by  chattel  slavery; 
in  the  North  by  the  wage  system.  It  is  true  that 
throughout  much  of  the  South  the  small  farmer  held 
his  own.  These  men  conformed  to  the  type  of  the 
land  farmer.  But  in  the  South  they  did  not  domi- 
nate social  and  political  life  as  the  slave  holder  did. 

[18] 


THE   LAND   FARMER 

In  the  Eastern  States  the  whole  social  economy  was, 
until  a  generation  after  the  Civil  "War,  dominated 
by  the  land  farmer. 

The  characteristics  of  the  land  farmer  are:  first, 
his  cultivation  of  the  first  values  of  the  land.  His 
order  of  life  is  characterized  by  initial  utility.  He 
lived  in  a  time  of  plenty.  The  abundance  of  nature, 
which  was  to  the  pioneer  a  detriment,  was  to  the 
land  farmer  a  source  of  wealth.  He  tilled  the  soil 
and  he  cut  the  timber,  he  explored  the  earth  for 
mines,  seeking  everywhere  the  first  values  of  a  virgin 
land.  As  these  first  values  were  exhausted,  he  moved 
on  to  new  territories.  All  his  ideas  of  social  life  were 
those  of  initial  utility.  The  rich  man  was  the  stand- 
ard and  the  admired  citizen.  The  policies  of  govern- 
ment were  dominated  by  the  ideas  of  a  land  holding 
people.  Individualism  proceeded  on  radiating  lines 
from  any  given  center.  The  development  of  per- 
sonality is  the  clue  to  the  history  of  that  period. 

The  second  characteristic  of  the  land  farmer  was 
his  development  of  the  family  group.  He  differed 
from  the  pioneer,  whose  life  was  lonely  and  indi- 
vidual, in  the  perfection  of  group  life  in  his  period. 
He  differs  from  the  exploiter  who  succeeds  him  in 
the  country  today  in  the  fact  that  exploitation  has 
dissolved  the  family  group.  The  experience  of 
the  land  farmer  compacted  and  perfected  the  house- 
hold group  in  the  country.  The  beginnings  of  this 
group  life  were  in  the  pioneer  period,  but  there  was 
not  peace  in  which  the  family  could  develop  nor  were 

[19] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

there  resources  by  which  it  could  be  endowed. 
The  classic  period  of  American  home  life  is  that  of 
the  land  farmer.  The  typical  American  home, 
as  it  lives  in  sentiment,  in  literature  and  in  idealism, 
is  the  home  of  the  land  farmer. 

Third,  the  land  farmer  owned  his  home.  He  built 
upon  his  farm  a  homestead  which  in  most  cases 
represented  his  ideal  of  domestic  and  family  comfort. 
He  built  for  permanence.  So  far  as  his  means  per- 
mitted he  provided  for  his  children  and  for  genera- 
tions of  descendants  after  them.  He  consecrated  the 
soil  to  his  people  and  to  his  name  by  setting  apart 
a  graveyard  on  his  own  land,  and  there  he  buried  his 
dead. 

Fourth,  the  land  farmer  had  neighbors.  His 
well-developed  family  group  would  not  have  been 
possible  without  other  groups  in  the  same  community 
and  the  independence  of  the  family  group  was  rela- 
tive, being  perfected  by  imitation  and  economic 
competition.  The  land-farmer  type  came  to  ma- 
turity only  when  the  whole  of  the  land  was  possessed, 
when  on  every  side  the  family  group  was  confronted 
with  other  family  groups,  and  neighborliness  became 
universal.  The  family  group  is  dependent  through 
intermarriage  and  relationship  upon  other  groups 
in  the  community.  Family  relationships  thus  came 
in  the  land-farmer  communities  to  be  very  general. 
Some  rough  and  crude  forms  of  economic  co-operation 
also  grew  up  in  this  period,  as  modifications  of  the 
competition  on  which  the  land-farmer  type  is  based. 

[20] 


THE   LAND   FARMER 

"The  farmer  type  produced  a  definite  social  life," 
says  Prof.  Ross.  "The  second  period,  extending 
from  1835  to  1890,  had  as  its  chief  objective  the 
enrichment  of  the  group  life." 

Fifth,  the  land  farmer  competed,  by  group  con- 
flict, with  his  neighbors.  Property  was  regarded  by 
the  land  farmer  as  a  family  possession.  Competition 
was  between  group  and  group,  between  household 
and  household.  The  moral  strength  as  well  as  the 
moral  deficiencies  of  this  type  of  man  flow  from  this 
competition.  He  considered  himself  essentially 
bounden  to  the  members  of  his  own  group  by  obli- 
gations and  free  from  moral  obligations  to  others. 
The  son  received  no  wages  from  his  father  for  work 
on  the  farm  and  the  daughter  did  not  dream  of  pay 
or  of  an  allowance  for  her  labor  in  the  house.  The 
land  farmer  conceived  of  his  estate  as  belonging  to 
his  family  group  and  embodied  in  himself.  There- 
fore he  had  no  wage  obligations  to  son  or  daughter 
and  he  felt  himself  obliged  so  to  distribute  his  prop- 
erty as  to  care  for  all  the  members  of  his  household. 
This  economic  competition  compacted  the  family 
group  and  formed  the  basis  for  the  social  economy 
of  the  country  community.  The  land  farmer  had 
no  ideal  of  community  prosperity.  His  thought  for 
generations  has  been  to  make  his  own  farm  prosper- 
ous, to  raise  some  crop  that  others  shall  not  raise, 
to  have  a  harvest  that  other  men  have  not  and  to 
find  a  market  which  other  men  have  not  discovered, 
by  which  he  and  his  farm  and  his  group  may  prosper. 

[21] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

It  is  hard  to  convince  the  land  farmer,  because  of 
his  immersion  in  this  group  conflict,  that  the  farmer's 
prosperity  is  dependent  upon  the  prosperity  of  other 
groups  in  the  community. 

The  presence  of  the  small  group  is  the  sign  of 
normal  social  life.  The  group  is  not  complete  in 
itself,  but  is  a  unit  in  human  association.  So  that 
the  farmer  economy  had  its  social  life  and  its  own 
type  of  communities.  The  economy  of  the  farmer 
period  represents  the  ideals  born  in  the  pioneer 
nation.  The  community  of  the  farmer  is  the  desti- 
period  of  the  life  of  the  pioneer.  The  farmer  still 
practises  a  variety  of  occupations.  His  tillage  of 
the  soil  and  his  household  economy  are  the  most 
conservative  in  all  American  population.  He  uses 
modern  machinery  in  the  fields,  but  to  a  great  degree 
his  wife  uses  the  old  mechanisms  in  the  kitchen  and 
in  the  household.  The  laborers  employed  on  the 
farm  are  received  into  the  farmer's  family  under 
conditions  of  social  equality.  The  man  who  is  this 
year  a  laborer  may  in  a  decade  be  a  farmer.  The 
dignifying  of  personality  with  land  ownership  has 
been  such  a  general  social  experience  in  the  country 
that  every  individual  is  thought  of  in  the  farmer 
period  as  a  potential  landowner. 

The  institutions  of  the  rural  community  of  the 
land-farmer  type  are  the  country  store,  the  rural 
school,  and  the  church.  The  country  store  deals 
in  general  merchandise  and  is  a  natural  outgrowth 
of  the  stores  of  the  pioneer  period  in  which  barter 

[22] 


THE   LAND    FARMER 

constituted  the  whole  of  the  commerce  of  the  com- 
munity. In  the  pioneer  store  but  a  few  commodities 
were  imported  from  the  outer  world.  The  greater 
part  of  the  merchandise  was  made  in  the  community 
and  distributed  in  the  store.  But  the  farmer's 
rural  economy  is  the  dawning  of  the  world  economy 
and  the  general  store  in  the  farming  community 
becomes  an  ecoAomic  institution  requiring  great 
ability  and  centering  in  itself  the  forces  of  general 
as  well  as  local  economics. 

The  general  storekeeper  of  this  type  in  the  country 
is  at  once  a  business  man,  a  money  lender,  an  em- 
ployer of  labor  and  the  manager  of  the  social  center. 
He  sells  goods  at  a  price  so  low  as  to  maintain  his 
local  trade  against  outside  competition.  He  loans 
money  on  mortgages  throughout  the  community, 
and  sells  goods  on  credit.  Judgment  of  men  and 
of  properties  is  so  essential  to  his  business  that  if 
he  can  not  judiciously  loan  and  give  credit  he  cannot 
maintain  a  country  store.  Around  his  warm  stove 
in  the  winter  and  at  his  door  in  summer  gather  the 
men  of  the  community  for  discussion  of  politics, 
religion  and  social  affairs.  In  addition  to  all  else, 
he  has  been  usually  the  postmaster  of  the  community. 

The  one-room  rural  school  which  is  the  prevailing 
type  throughout  the  country  is  a  product  of  the  land- 
farmer  period.  Its  prevalence  shows  that  we  are 
still  in  land-farmer  conditions:  and  the  criticism 
to  which  it  is  now  subjected  indicates  that  we  are 
conscious  of  a  new  epoch  in  rural  life. 

[23] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

It  fits  well  into  the  life  of  the  land  farmer  because 
it  gives  obviously  a  mere  hint  of  learning.  It  has 
been  the  boast  of  its  advocates  that  it  taught  only 
the  "three  Rs.'*  Its  training  for  life  is  rudimentary 
only:  it  gives  but  an  alphabet.  The  land  farmer 
expected  to  live  in  his  group.  Secure  in  his  own  acres 
and  believing  himself  "as  good  as  anybody,"  he 
relied  for  his  son  and  daughter  not  upon  trained  skill, 
but  upon  native  abilities,  sterling  character,  inde- 
pendence and  industry.  Of  all  these  the  household, 
not  the  school,  is  the  source.  So  that  the  one-room 
country  school  was  satisfactory  to  those  who  created 
it. 

In  another  chapter  the  common  schools  are  more 
fully  discussed.  Here  it  may  be  said  only  that  the 
creation  of  such  a  system  was  an  honor  to  any  people. 
The  farmers  who  out  of  a  splendid  idealism  placed 
a  schoolhouse  at  every  cross  roads,  on  every  hilltop 
and  in  every  mountain  valley,  exact  a  tribute  of 
praise  from  their  successors.  The  unit  of  measure- 
ment of  the  school  district,  on  which  this  system  was 
based,  was  the  day's  journey  of  a  child  six  years  of 
age.  Two  miles  must  be  its  longest  radius.  The 
generation  who  spanned  this  continent  with  the 
measure  of  an  infant's  pace,  mapped  the  land  into 
districts,  erected  houses  at  the  centers,  and  employed 
teachers  as  the  masters  of  learning  for  these  little 
states,  were  men  of  statesmanlike  power.  The 
country  school  is  a  nobler  monument  of  the  land 
farmer  than  anything  else  he  has  done. 

[24] 


THE    LAND    FARMER 

The  rural  "academy"  was  the  most  influential 
school  of  the  land  farmer's  time.  Situated  at  the 
center  of  leading  communities,  in  New  England, 
Pennsylvania  and  the  older  Eastern  States,  it  was 
often  under  the  control  or  the  influence  of  the  parish 
minister.  It  generally  exerted  a  great  influence  for 
the  building  of  the  church  and  the  community. 
Its  teachers  were  men  of  scholarly  ideals.  Its  stu- 
dents were  from  the  locality,  being  selected  by  ambi- 
tion for  learning,  and  by  their  ability  to  pay  the 
tuition. 

The  development  of  the  high  schools  has  generally 
resulted  in  the  abandonment  of  the  academies.  A 
few  have  survived  and  have  adapted  themselves 
to  new  times.  But  it  is  to  be  doubted  whether  the 
common  schools  have  so  far  done  as  much  for  build- 
ing and  for  organizing  country  communities,  for 
providing  local  leadership,  for  building  churches, 
as  did  the  rural  academies  of  New  England,  Pennsyl- 
vania and  other  Eastern  States. 

The  farmer's  church  is  the  classic  American  type 
of  church  at  its  best.  The  farming  economy  suc- 
ceeded to  the  pioneer  economy  without  serious  break. 
The  troubles  of  the  country  church  have  their  begin- 
nings in  the  period  of  the  exploiter  which  is  to  follow, 
but  the  farmer  developed  the  church  of  the  pioneer 
with  sympathy  and  consistency.  The  church  of 
the  farmer  still  values  personal  salvation  above  all. 
The  revival  methods  and  the  simplicity  of  doctrine 

[25] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

have  remained,  but  the  farmer  has  added  typical 
methods  of  his  own. 

The  effect  of  this  individualism  is  exhibited  in  the 
multipHcation  of  churches  among  farmers.  So  long 
as  it  is  admitted  that  the  church  is  for  personal 
salvation,  it  does  not  need  to  be  a  social  institution. 
A  small  group  is  as  effective  as  a  large  one  for  secur- 
ing salvation  for  individuals.  Two  churches  or 
three  may  as  well  serve  a  community  as  one,  if 
personal  salvation  be  the  service  rendered.  The 
gospel  is  for  the  farmer  good  tidings, — not  a  call  to 
social  service.  The  result  of  the  farmer  period  has 
been,  therefore,  the  multiplication  of  competitive 
country  churches.  An  instance  of  this  competitive 
condition  is:  the  community  in  Kansas  in  which 
among  four  hundred  people  resident  in  a  field,  there 
are  seven  churches,  each  of  them  attempting  to 
maintain  a  resident  pastor.  In  Centre  County,  Pa., 
in  a  radius  of  four  miles  from  a  given  point,  there  are 
twenty-four  country  churches.  In  the  same  terri- 
tory within  a  radius  of  three  miles  are  sixteen  of 
these  coimtry  churches.  This  condition  is  satisfac- 
tory to  the  ideals  of  the  farmer.  If  the  farmer  type 
were  permanent  these  churches  might  serve  perma- 
nently for  the  ministry  of  personal  salvation.  They 
are  well  attended  by  devout  and  religious-minded 
people.  Their  condemnation  is  not  in  the  farmer 
economy  but  in  the  inevitable  coming  of  the  ex- 
ploiter and  the  husbandman  with  their  different 
experience  and  different  type  of  mind. 

[26] 


THE   LAND   FARMER 

in  this  period  the  minister  frequently  is  himself  a 
tiller  of  the  soil.  Many  of  the  older  churches  had 
land,  ten  or  twenty  or  forty  acres,  which  the  minister 
was  expected  to  till,  and  from  it  to  secure  a  part  of 
his  living.  A  church  at  Cranberry,  N.  J.,  had  a 
farm  of  one  hundred  acres  until  the  close  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  But  with  the  coming  of  the  ex- 
ploiter and  the  husbandman  the  minister  ceases  to 
be  an  agriculturist. 

Like  unto  the  tillage  of  the  soil  by  the  minister 
was  the  "donation"  to  the  minister,  of  vegetables, 
com,  honey  and  other  farm  products.  At  one  time 
this  filled  a  large  place  in  the  supply  of  the  min- 
ister's living.  In  various  communities  the  custom^ 
has  remained  with  fine  tenacity  in  the  presentation 
to  the  minister  of  portions  of  farm  produce  through- 
out the  year.  But  the  portions  so  given  are  fewer, 
as  years  pass,  and  the  total  quantity  small.  The 
donation  of  vegetables  and  farm  produce  has  sur- 
vived in  but  a  few  places.  The  modes  of  life  which 
succeeded  to  the  farmer  economy  are  dependent 
on  cash  for  the  distribution  of  values,  and  the 
"donation,"  if  it  remain  at  all,  is  a  gift  of  money. 
Frequently  the  "donation"  has  survived  as  a  social 
gathering,  being  perpetuated  in  one  of  its  functions 
only,  its  earlier  purposes  and  its  essential  form  being 
forgotten. 

The  church  of  the  land  farmer  corresponded  by  log- 
ical social  causation  to  the  social  economy  of  this 
type.     It  was  seated  with  family  pews  generally 

[27] 


EVOLUTION    OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

rented  by  the  family  group  and  sometimes  owned  in 
fee.  In  the  South  the  slave-holding  churches,  which 
have  all  passed  away,  had  galleries  for  the  slaves,  who 
worshipped  thus  under  the  same  roof  with  their 
masters.  The  preaching  of  this  period  was  directed 
to  the  development  of  group  life.  Its  ethical  stand- 
ards were  those  of  the  household  group,  in  which 
private  property  in  land,  domestic  morality,  filial 
and  domestic  experiences  furnished  the  stimuli. 

The  land-farmer's  church  had  some  organizations 
to  correspond  to  the  differences  in  social  life.  The 
presence  of  the  children  in  the  family  group  is  rep- 
resented in  the  Sunday  schools  and  parochial  schools 
built  during  this  period.  The  schools  are  in  many 
cases  highly  organized,  with  separate  recognition 
of  infancy,  adolescence  and  middle  life.  In  Protes- 
tant churches  the  particular  concerns  of  women  and 
the  religious  service  rendered  by  them  take  form  in 
women's  societies  in  the  churches,  mostly  charitable 
and  missionary. 

Finally,  at  the  close  of  the  land-farmer  period, 
about  1890,  there  sprang  up  the  young  people's 
societies,  which  in  the  ten  closing  years  of  the  land- 
farmer  period  reached  a  membership  of  hundreds 
of  thousands  among  the  Protestant  churches.  These 
societies  of  young  people  were  organized  in  the 
churches  to  correspond  to  the  growing  self -conscious- 
ness among  adolescent  members  of  the  land-farmer's 
household.  The  young  men  and  women  in  the 
maturing  of  the  family  group  came  to  have  a  life  of 

[281 


THE   LAND    FARMER 

their  own.  As  frequently  happens,  the  family 
group  reached  its  highest  development  and  perfec- 
tion just  before  it  was  to  pass  away. 

The  church  of  the  land-farmer  is  the  typical  Prot- 
estant church  of  the  United  States.  So  influential 
has  the  farmer  been  in  national  life  that  organized 
religion  has  idealized  his  type  of  church.  It  has 
been  transported  to  villages  and  towns.  It  has 
become  the  type  of  church  most  frequent  in  the 
cities. 

Nearly  all  the  Protestant  churches  in  New  York 
City  are  land-farmer  churches;  "and  that,"  says 
a  noted  city  pastor,  "is  what  ails  them."'  This 
church  centers  its  activities  in  preaching,  rents  or 
assigns  its  pews  to  families,  and  organizes  societies 
for  the  various  factors  of  the  family  group.  It  has 
Sunday  schools,  women's,  men's  and  young  people's 
societies,  with  only  one  minister  to  supervise  them 
aU. 

The  transformation  of  this  type  of  church,  so 
deeply  rooted  in  the  idealism  of  the  whole  people, 
into  a  church  better  suited  to  city,  factory,  town 
and  mining  settlement,  has  been  the  problem  for 
Protestant  bodies  to  solve  in  the  past  twenty  years. 
The  beginning  of  this  transformation,  it  is  striking 
to  observe,  came  at  the  end  of  the  land-farmer  period, 
about  1890. 

The  land-farmer,  then,  whose  period  according 
to  Prof.  Ross,  estended  from  1835  to  1890  in  the 

« Rev.  Charles  Stelzle. 
[«9] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

Middle  West,  is  the  best  known  agricultural  type. 
He  is  the  typical  countryman  as  the  countryman  is 
imagined  in  the  cities  and  recorded  in  out  literature. 
It  has  been  the  American  hope  that  he  should  be 
the  land-owner  of  the  days  to  come.  In  East  Ten- 
nessee the  farmer  is  still  the  type  of  landowner  in 
country  communities.  In  some  portions  of  Michigan 
and  Minnesota  the  farmer  type  gives  character  to 
the  whole  population,  but  generally  throughout  the 
country  the  processes  described  by  Prof.  Ross  have 
undermined  the  integrity  of  the  farmer  type  and 
broken  his  hold  upon  leadership  of  the  country 
population.  Within  the  last  two  decades,  since 
1890,  the  farmer  has  been  gradually  discouraged  and 
has  realized  that  his  economy  is  not  suited  to  sur- 
vive. The  most  representative  farming  communi- 
ties today  are  those  of  Scotch  or  Scotch-Irish  people, 
whose  instinctive  tenacity,  their  "clannishness,** 
has  perpetuated  longer  than  in  other  instances  the 
rural  economy  and  the  country  community. 

In  using  the  term  land-farmer  I  am  aware  of  its 
close  resemblance  to  the  term  exploiter.  The  word 
itself  points  to  exploitation  of  land.  The  land  farmer 
has  used  the  raw  materials  of  the  country.  He  has 
tilled  the  soil  until  its  fertility  was  exhausted  and 
then  moved  on  to  the  newer  regions  of  the  West, 
again  to  farm  and  to  exploit  the  virgin  riches  of  a 
plenteous  land.  The  planter  in  the  South,  possess- 
ing frequently  more  than  a  thousand  acres,  was 
accustomed  to  till  a  portion  of  one  hundred,  two 

1^0] 


THE   LAND   FARMER 

hundred  or  four  hundred  acres,  until  its  fertility 
had  been  exhausted.  Then  he  moved  his  slaves 
to  another  section,  cleared  the  land  and  cultivated 
it  until  its  power  to  produce  had  also  been  exhausted. 
The  difference  between  land-fanning  and  exploita- 
tion is  the  absence  of  speculation  in  land  in  the  former 
period. 


[ni 


m 

THE  EXPLOITER 

THE  third  type  in  American  agriculture  is  the 
exploiter.  Between  the  farmer  and  the 
husbandman  there  is  an  economic  revolution. 
In  fact  the  exploiter  himself  is  a  transition  type  be- 
tween the  farmer  and  the  husbandman.  "The 
fundamental  problem  in  American  economics  always 
has  been  that  of  the  distribution  of  land,"  says 
Prof.  Ross.  The  exploiter  is,  I  presume,  a  temporary 
economic  type,  created  in  the  period  of  re-distribu- 
tion of  land.  The  characteristic  of  the  exploiter 
is  his  commercial  valuation  of  all  things.  He  is 
the  man  who  sees  only  the  value  of  money. 

It  was  natural  that  with  the  maturing  of  an  Ameri- 
can population,  the  exploitation  of  the  natural  re- 
sources should  come.  We  have  exploited  the  forest, 
removing  the  timber  from  the  hills  and  making  out 
of  its  vast  resources  a  few  fortunes.  We  wasted 
in  the  process  nine-tenths  for  every  one-tenth  of 
wealth  accumulated  by  the  exploiter.  We  have 
exploited  the  coal  and  iron  and  other  minerals.  The 
exploitation  of  the  oil  deposits  and  natural  gas 
reservoirs  has  been  a  national  experience  and  a 
national  scandal.     The  tendency  to  exploit  every 

[32] 


THE    EXPLOITER 

opportunity  for  private  wealth  has  characterized 
the  past  two  decades.^ 

There  are  those  who  exploit  the  child  vitality 
of  the  families  of  working  people,  and  the  States  have 
put  legal  checks  in  the  way  of  child  labor.  The 
exploitation  of  the  labor  of  women  has  gone  so  far 
as  to  threaten  the  vitality  of  the  generation  to  be 
born,  and  laws  have  been  passed  which  forbid  the 
employment  of  women  except  within  limits.  The 
ethical  discussion  of  the  past  decade  is  largely  a  keen 
analysis  of  the  methods  of  exploitation  of  resources, 
of  men  and  of  communities,  and  an  attempt  to  fix 
the  bounds  of  the  exploitation  of  values  for  private 
wealth. 

There  are  those  who  exploit  the  farm.  "Farms 
which  from  the  original  entry  until  1890  had  been 
owned  by  the  same  family,  or  which  had  changed 
owners  but  once  or  twice,  and  whose  owners  were 
proud  to  assert  that  their  broad  acres  had  never  been 
encumbered  with  mortgages,  since  1890  have  been 
sold,  in  some  instances  as  often  as  ten  times,  in  more 
numerous  instances  four  or  five  times,  and  a  large 
part  of  the  purchase  price  is  secured  by  encumbering 
the  estates! "2 

Agriculture,  especially  of  the  Middle  West,  is 
affected  in  all  its  parts  by  the  exploitation  of  land. 
To  a  traveller  from  the  Eastern  States,  the  selling 

iThe  Conservation  of  Natural  Resources  in  the  United  States,  by 
Van  Hise. 

» J.  B.  Ross — "Agrarian  Changes  in  the  Middle  West." 
4  [33] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

and  re-selling  of  farm  land,  without  fertilization  or 
improvement  by  any  of  the  successive  owners,  is  a 
source  of  amazement. 

"The  new  lands  opened  under  the  Homestead 
act  of  half  a  century  ago  were  often  exploited  for 
temporary  profit  by  soil  robbers  who  were  experts 
of  their  kind.  Owing  to  such  farm  management, 
the  yield  of  the  acre  in  the  United  States  gradually 
decreased.     Very  little  intensive  farming  was  done."^ 

The  commercial  exploitation  of  land  dissolves 
every  permanent  factor  in  the  farm  economy.  The 
country  community  of  the  land-farmer  type  is  being 
undermined  and  is  crumbling  away  under  the  in- 
fluence of  exploitation.  The  pioneers  were  a  West- 
ward emigration,  pushing  Westward  the  boundaries 
of  the  country  at  the  rate  of  fifty  miles  in  a  decade; 
but  since  1890  emigration  has  been  eastward,  and 
it  is  made  up  of  farmers  who  move  to  ever  cheaper 
and  cheaper  lands  to  the  East,  the  tide  of  higher 
prices  coming  from  the  West.  Already  in  central 
Illinois  the  values  of  land  seem  to  have  reached  the 
high  water  mark.  About  Galesburg  "the  Swedes 
have  got  hold  of  the  land  and  they  will  not  sell." 
Among  the  last  recorded  sales  in  this  district  were 
some  at  prices  between  two  hundred  and  two  hun- 
dred fifty  dollars  per  acre. 

It  is  not  generally  understood  that  this  exploita- 
tion of  farm  lands  has  extended  over  nearly  the  whole 

"  Secretary  of  Agriculture,  James  Wilson  at  the  United  States  Land 
and  Irrigation  Exposition,  Chicago,  Nov.  19,  1910. 

[341 


THE    EXPLOITER 

country.  Its  spread  is  increasingly  rapid  in  the 
last  two  years.  In  the  Gulf  States  and  the  Carolinas 
and  in  Tennessee  and  Kentucky  prices  of  farm  land 
have  increased  in  the  last  five  years  from  twenty- 
five  to  one  hundred  per  cent.  Even  in  the  most 
conservative  counties  in  Pennsylvania  the  prices 
of  farm  land  have  increased  twenty  to  twenty-five 
per  cent. 

The  sign  of  this  exploitation  is  a  rapid  increase  in 
the  market  values  of  farm  land,  due  to  frequent 
sale  and  purchase.  This  increase  is  independent  of 
any  increase  in  essential  value  to  the  farmer.  The 
net  income  of  the  farmer  may  have  been  increased 
only  five  per  cent,  as  in  the  State  of  Indiana,  whereas 
the  values  of  farm  land  have  increased  in  the  same 
period  more  than  one  hundred  per  cent.  That  is, 
the  speculative  increases  have  been  twenty  times 
as  much  as  the  agricultural  increase. 

Along  with  this  change  in  farm  values  goes  the 
increase  or  decrease  in  the  number  of  tenant  farmers 
and  the  shifting  of  the  ownership  of  land  to  farm 
landlords.  In  some  parts  of  the  country  this  ex- 
ploitation has  taken  a  purely  speculative  form.  In 
all  parts  it  is  speculative  in  character,  but  in  some 
sections  of  the  country  the  exploiters  are  themselves 
farmers  and  the  process  is  imposed  upon  the  farmers 
themselves  by  economic  causes.  This  is  true  of  the 
Illinois  and  Indiana  lands,  which  are  under  the  in- 
fluence of  a  system  of  drainage,  but  there  are  other 
portions  of  the  country  in  which  the  process  is  chiefly 

[3,5] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

speculative.  In  some  Western  States  the  exploita- 
tion of  farm  land  is  in  the  hands  of  speculators 
themselves,  doing  real  estate  business  purely  as  a 
matter  of  trade.  It  would  be  a  mistake,  however, 
to  attribute  a  process  so  general  as  this  one  to  the 
power  exerted  by  a  class  of  real  estate  agents.  Its 
causes  are  deeper  than  the  commercial  process. 
They  go  into  the  very  roots  of  modern  life.  This 
should  be  clearly  understood,  because  when  frankly 
realized  it  compels  the  adjustment  of  social,  educa- 
tional and  religious  work  to  the  period  of  exploitation. 

The  effect  of  this  process  is  upon  all  the  life  of 
country  people.  It  has  created  its  own  class  of 
men.  There  was  no  intention  in  the  mind  of  earlier 
Americans  that  we  should  ever  have  a  tenant  class 
in  America.  The  assumption  on  which  all  our  ideals 
are  built  has  been  that  we  would  be  a  land-owning 
people,  but  we  are  confronted  with  a  tenantry  prob- 
lem as  difficult  as  any  in  the  world.  The  process 
of  exploiting  land  has  added  to  the  social  and  eco- 
nomic life  of  the  country  the  farm  landlord,  whose 
influence  upon  the  immediate  future  of  the  Ameri- 
can country  community,  church  and  school,  in  all 
sections  will  be  great,  and  in  many  communities  will 
be  dominating. 

The  exploitation  of  land  has  produced  the  retired 
fanner.  He  is  a  pure  example  of  the  weakness  of 
the  exploiter  economy.  Originally  he  was  a  home- 
steader, or  perhaps  a  purchaser  of  cheap  land  in  the 
early  days.     He  expected  not  to  remain  a  farmer, 

[36] 


THE    EXPLOITER 

but  hoped  for  removal  to  the  East  or  to  a  college 
town.  The  motives  which  animated  him  were 
varied,  but  among  them  none  was  so  prominent  as 
a  desire  for  better  education  than  was  provided  for 
his  children  in  the  country  community  of  the  farmer 
type.  So  that  at  forty  or  fifty  years  of  age  he  seized 
an  opportunity  to  sell  his  land,  as  the  prices  were 
rising,  and  retired  to  the  town  with  a  cash  fortune  for 
investment. 

Immediately  the  economic  forces  to  which  he  had 
submitted  himself  made  of  him  a  new  type,  for  the 
retired  farmer  in  the  Middle  West  is  a  characteristic 
type  of  the  leading  towns  and  cities.  Some  whole 
streets  in  large  centers  are  peopled  with  retired 
farmers.  The  civic  policies  of  scores  of  small 
municipalities  are  controlled  in  a  measure  by  them, 
so  that  journalists,  religious  leaders,  reformers  and 
politicians  have  very  clear-cut  opinions  as  to  the 
value  of  the  retired  farmer. 

The  analysis  of  this  situation  is  as  follows.  While 
the  land  which  he  sold  continued  to  increase  in  value, 
his  small  fortune  began  to  diminish  in  value.  The 
interest  on  his  money  has  been  less  every  ten  years; 
whereas  he  formerly  could  loan  at  first  for  six  and 
sometimes  seven  per  cent,  he  cannot  loan  safely  now 
for  more  than  five  or  six  per  cent. 

Meantime  the  prices  of  all  things  he  has  to  buy 
are  expressed  in  cash, — no  longer  in  kind  as  on  the 
farm;  and  these  cash  prices  are  growing.  In  the 
past  decade  they  have  almost  doubled.     This  means 

[37] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

that  he  is  a  poorer  man.  His  money  has  a  diminished 
purchasing  power  and  he  has  a  smaller  yearly  income. 

In  addition  to  this,  his  wants,  and  the  wants  of 
the  members  of  the  family  are  increased  two  or 
three  times.  They  cannot  live  as  they  lived  on  the 
farm.  They  cannot  dress  as  they  dressed  in  the 
country.  The  pressure  of  these  increasing  economic 
wants,  demanding  to  be  satisfied  out  of  a  diminished 
income,  with  higher  prices  for  the  things  to  be  pur- 
chased, keeps  the  retired  farmer  a  poor  man.  The 
result  is  that  the  retired  farmer  is  opposed  to  every 
step  of  progress  in  the  growing  town  in  which  he  lives. 
He  opposes  every  increase  of  taxation  and  fights 
every  assessment.  He  dreads  a  subscription  list 
and  hates  to  hear  of  contributions.  Although  an 
intelligent  and  pious  man,  he  has  come  to  be  an 
obstacle  to  the  building  of  libraries,  churches  and 
schools  and  opposed  to  all  humane  and  missionary 
activities.  He  is  suffering  from  a  great  economic 
mistake. 

Before  leaving  the  exploiter  it  is  to  be  said  he 
also  has  his  church.  The  exploiter  has  built  no 
community.  He  has  contributed  the  retired  farmer 
to  the  large  towns  and  small  cities  of  the  Middle 
West.  It  is  natural,  therefore,  that  few  exploiter 
churches  are  found  in  the  country.  But  in  the  larger 
centers  there  are  churches  whose  doctrine  and 
methods  are  those  of  the  exploiter.  Indeed,  at  the 
present  time  the  exploiter's  doctrine  in  ethics  and 

[381 


THE   EXPLOITER 

religion  is  highly  popular.  It  is  the  doctrine  of  the 
consecration  of  wealth. 

There  are  in  the  larger  cities  churches  whose  busi- 
ness is  to  give;  Sunday  after  Sunday  they  hear 
pleas  and  consider  the  cases  of  college  presidents, 
superintendents  of  charities,  secretaries  of  mission 
boards  and  other  oflficial  solicitors.  These  churches 
have  systematized  the  discipline  of  giving.  Their 
boards  of  oflficers  control  the  appeals  that  shall  be 
made  to  their  people.  Such  churches  are  highly 
individualist  in  character,  and  the  preacher  who 
ministers  in  such  a  church  has  a  doctrine  of  individual 
culture  and  responsibility. 

The  exploiter's  doctrine  of  systematic  giving  has 
gone  into  all  of  the  communities  in  which  prosperous 
people  live.  It  has  become  a  moral  code  for  million- 
aires, and  the  response  to  it  is  annually  measured 
in  the  great  gifts  of  men  of  large  means  to  institutions 
which  exist  for  the  use  of  all  mankind. 

But  not  all  the  farm  exploiters  retired  from  the 
farm.  The  stronger  and  more  successful  have  be- 
come absentee  landlords.  These  men  have  invested 
their  cash  in  farm  lands.  Distrusting  the  invest- 
ments of  the  city  market,  and  fearing  Wall  Street, 
they  have  purchased  increased  acreage  in  the  coun- 
try, and  when  the  local  market  was  exhausted,  they 
have  invested  in  the  Southwest  and  the  far  West, 
buying   ever    more    and    more    land.    They    have 

[39] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

proven  that  "It  is  possible  to  maintain  a  vicious 
economic  method  on  a  rising  market."^ 

These  landlords  have  leased  their  land  in  accord- 
ance with  mere  expediency.  No  plans  have  been 
made  in  the  American  rural  economy  for  a  tenantry. 
The  lease,  therefore,  throughout  the  United  States 
generally  is  for  only  one  year.  This  gives  to  the 
landlord  the  greatest  freedom,  and  to  the  tenant 
the  least  responsibility.  Neither  is  willing  to  enter 
into  a  contract  by  which  the  land  itself  can  be  bene- 
fitted. The  landlord  is  looking  for  the  increase  of 
the  values  of  land,  and  is  ever  mindful  of  a  possible 
buyer.  Moreover,  he  is  watchful  of  the  market 
for  the  crop  and  of  the  size  of  the  crop,  so  that  he 
desires  to  be  free  at  the  end  of  the  year  to  make  other 
arrangements. 

The  tenant  on  his  part  is  somewhat  eager  to  do 
as  he  pleases  for  a  year.  He  expects  to  be  himself  an 
owner,  and  he  does  not  expect  to  remain  permanently 
as  a  tenant  on  that  farm.  He  reckons  that  he  can 
get  a  good  deal  out  of  the  land  in  the  year,  and  is 
unwilling  to  bind  himself  for  a  long  period.  "The 
American  system  of  farm  tenantry  is  the  worst  of 
which  I  have  knowledge  in  any  country."  ^ 

It  is  true  that  in  some  parts  of  the  country  leases 
of  three  and  five  years  are  granted  to  tenants  by  the 
landlords.  At  Penn  Yan,  New  York,  a  reliable  class 
of  Danes  secure  such  leases  from  the  owners.     I  am 

>  The  Rural  Life  Problem  in  the  United  States,  by  Sir  Horace  Plunkett. 
« Dean  Chas.  F.  Curtiss,  State  College  of  Iowa. 

[40] 


THE    EXPLOITER 

aware,  also,  that  in  Delaware,  in  an  old  section  de- 
pendent upon  fertilization  for  its  crops,  where  the 
land  is  in  the  hands  of  a  few  representatives  of  the 
old  farmer  type  who  have  held  it  for  generations, 
that  the  tillage  of  the  soil  shows  specialization.  The 
landlord  and  the  tenant  co-operate.  The  leases, 
while  they  are  for  but  a  year,  specify  how  the  land 
shall  be  tilled,  how  fertilized.  They  require  the 
rotation  of  crops  and  the  keeping  of  a  certain 
number  of  cattle  by  the  tenants.  The  landlord 
personally  oversees  the  tillage  of  several  farms. 
This  seems  the  beginning  of  husbandry,  instead  of 
exploitation  of  the  land. 

Another  instance  of  the  landlord  who  is  more  than 
a  mere  exploiter  is  that  of  David  Rankin,  recently 
deceased.  In  the  last  years  of  his  life  Mr.  Rankin 
owned  about  thirty  thousand  acres  of  land  in  Mis- 
souri. It  was  said  in  1910  that  he  had  seventeen 
thousand  acres  of  corn.  He  had  a  genius  for  esti- 
mating the  values  of  land,  the  expensiveness  of 
drainage,  and  the  possibilities  of  the  market.  He  was 
an  expert  buyer  of  cattle,  and  a  master  of  the  prob- 
lems entering  into  progressive  farming  on  a  large 
scale. 

From  his  vast  acreage  Mr.  Rankin  sold  not  one 
bushel  of  corn.  All  his  crops  "went  off  on  four 
legs."  "He  drove  his  corn  to  market,"  as  they  say 
in  the  Middle  West.  He  bought  cattle  from  the 
ranches,  for  none  were  bred  on  his  own  land.  He 
fattened  them  for  the  market,  translating  corn  into 

[41] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

beef,  and  he  was  well  aware  of  the  values  of  pork 
in  the  economy  of  such  a  farm.  Nothing  went  to 
waste.  According  to  the  formula  in  Nebraska, 
"For  every  cow  keep  a  sow,  that's  the  how."  Mr. 
Rankin  made  large  profits  from  his  cattle  and  hogs. 

It  is  true  that  he  cared  nothing  for  the  community 
or  its  institutions.  On  his  wide  acres  family  life 
was  replaced  by  boarding-houses.  Schools  and 
churches  were  closed,  and  many  farmhouses  built 
by  the  homesteaders  rotted  down  to  their  foundations. 
But  David  Rankin  was  a  husbandman,  if  not  a 
humanist.  His  tillage  of  the  soil  was  successful 
in  that  it  maintained  the  fertility  of  the  soil,  that 
it  produced  large  quantities  of  food  for  the  consumer, 
and  that  it  was  profitable. 

The  following  is  a  description  of  community 
life  under  the  influence  of  such  great  landlords, 
by  a  Western  observer: — 

*'The  city  of  Casselton,  North  Dakota,  was  origi- 
nally started  about  the  year  1879.  Thirty  years 
ago  the  first  settlers  came  to  this  great  prairie 
region  from  the  New  England  and  Central  States. 
It  was  shortly  before  this  or  about  this  time  that 
the  Northern  Pacific  Railroad  was  built  across  this 
western  prairie.  The  government  gave  to  the  road 
every  other  section  of  land  on  each  side  of  the  rail- 
road for  thirty  miles  as  a  bonus.  That  land  was 
sold  in  the  early  days  by  the  railroad  to  purchasers 
for  fifty  cents  an  acre.  It  was  some  of  the  finest 
farming  land  in  the  wide  world.     Out  of  those  sale^ 

[42] 


THE   EXPLOITER 

grew  some  of  the  immense  farms  that  have  been  so 
famous  over  the  country  and  while  they  are  great 
business  concerns  managed  with  fine  business  ability, 
yet  they  are  not  much  of  a  help  in  the  settling  of 
the  country.  Here  within  one  mile  of  Casselton 
is  the  famous  Dalrymple  farm  of  twenty-eight 
thousand  acres.  This  farm  employs  during  the  busy 
season  what  men  it  needs  from  the  drifting  classes 
and  puts  no  families  on  its  broad  acres.  These 
men  are  here  a  short  season  in  the  summer,  then  are 
gone.  They  are  rushed  with  work  for  that  season, 
Sundays  as  well  as  other  days  from  early  morning 
to  late  at  night,  making  it  almost  impossible  to  touch 
their  religious  life  or  even  to  count  them  a  part  of 
the  community  life. 

"Another  farm  is  the  Chaffee  farm  of  thirty-five 
thousand  acres.  Mr.  Chaffee  is  a  thorough  business 
man  but  is  a  fine  Christian  and  places  a  good  family 
on  each  section  of  land.  He  allows  no  Sunday  work. 
Has  a  little  city  kept  up  in  beautiful  condition  in 
the  center  of  his  land  where  he  lives  with  his  clerks 
and  immediate  helpers.  Here  they  have  a  neat 
little  Congregational  church  and  support  their  own 
minister.  His  fine  influence  is  felt  all  over  the  coun- 
try. The  partners  in  this  farm  also  have  a  land 
and  loan  corporation  and  also  a  large  flour  mill  in 
Casselton  which  employs  about  twenty-eight  men, 
running  day  and  night  during  the  busy  season. 

"There  are  many  farms  smaller,  from  one  thous- 
and acres  and  up.     Many  also  of  a  quarter  section. 

[43] 


EVOLUTION    OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

Casselton  was  built  simply  as  a  center  for  this 
beautiful  and  rich  farming  region.  It  is  in  the  center 
of  a  strip  six  miles  long  and  twenty-five  miles  wide 
which  is  said  to  be  one  of  the  finest  sections  in  the 
land.  There  are  other  towns  sprung  up  in  the  same 
section  also.  Through  the  past  thirty  years  farmers 
have  retired,  well  to  do,  and  moved  into  the  city. 
Here  are  now  maintained  excellent  schools." 

In  conclusion:  the  exploitation  of  farm  lands  is  a 
process  with  which  the  church  in  the  country  cannot 
deal  by  persuasion.  It  is  an  economic  condition. 
They  who  are  engaged  in  this  process  or  are  con- 
cerned in  its  effects  are  in  so  far  immune  to  the 
preacher  who  ignores  or  who  does  not  understand 
these  economic  conditions.  Their  action  is  con- 
ditioned by  their  status.  They  will  infallibly  act 
with  relation  to  the  church  in  accordance  with  the 
motives  which  arise  out  of  their  condition.  That 
is,  they  will  act  as  tenant  farmers,  as  retired  farmers 
or  as  absentee  landlords.  They  must  be  treated  on 
these  terms.  Their  whole  relation  to  organized 
religion  will  be  that  of  the  condition  in  which  they 
live  and  by  which  they  get  their  daily  bread.  This 
is  a  matter  independent  of  personal  goodness.  The 
church  is  dependent  not  on  personal  good  influences, 
but  upon  the  response  which  a  man  makes  in  accord- 
ance with  his  economic  and  social  character. 

For  instance,  in  Wisconsin  a  church  worker 
found  that  thousands  of  acres  in  a  certain  section 
were  owned  by  a  Milwaukee  capitalist.     He  found 

[44] 


THE   EXPLOITER 

that  the  tenant  farmers  on  these  acres  were  poor 
and  struggling  for  a  better  living,  and  he  could  not, 
among  them,  finance  an  adequate  church.  He 
promptly  went  to  Milwaukee  and  secured  five 
minutes  of  the  time  and  attention  of  the  absentee 
landlord.  When  he  had  stated  the  case  and  the 
reasons  why  this  large  owner  should  give  to  the 
country  church  on  his  acres,  the  man  promptly  said, 
"You  have  stated  what  I  never  before  realized  and 
I  will  give  you  a  contribution  of  one  hundred  dol- 
lars per  year  for  that  church  until  you  hear  from  me 
to  the  contrary." 

In  contrast  to  this  there  is  in  Central  Illinois  a 
large  estate  of  five  thousand  acres.  The  owner  lives 
in  a  distant  city  and  his  son  tills  the  land.  It  is 
known  among  the  neighbors  that  the  son  has  orders 
to  oppose  all  improvements  of  churches  and  of 
schools,  "because  there  is  no  money  for  us  in  the 
church  or  the  school." 

It  is  useless  to  complain  of  the  position  in  which  a 
man  is.  The  minister's  duty  is  to  utilize  him  in 
his  own  status  and  to  enable  him  to  practise  the 
virtues  which  are  open  to  him.  The  retired  farmer 
can  become  an  active  and  devoted  evangelist, 
preacher  or  organizer.  He  should  be  made  a  leader 
in  the  intellectual  development  of  the  farmer's 
problem  of  the  region.  He  has  leisure  and  intelli- 
gence and  is  often  a  devout  man.  It  is  the  business 
of  the  minister  to  transform  this  into  religious  and 
social    efficiency.    The    temperance    movement   in 

[45] 


EVOLUTION    OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

the  Middle  West  has  had  generous  and  devoted 
support  from  the  retired  farmers  living  in  the  towns. 
The  families  of  these  one  time  farmers  are  seeking 
after  culture.  The  literary  and  aesthetic  aspects 
of  the  community  can  well  be  committed  to  mem- 
bers of  these  families.  Their  value  for  the  com- 
munity is  probably  in  these  directions.  Above 
all  it  is  the  business  of  the  minister  to  sympathize 
with  the  life  they  are  living  and  to  enable  them  to 
live  it  to  the  highest  advantage. 

The  energies  of  the  church  should  be  devoted  to 
the  tenant  farmer.  Of  this  more  will  be  said  in 
another  place.  He  also  must  be  treated  in  sympathy 
with  his  social  and  economic  experience  and  the 
religious  service  rendered  to  him  must  be  the  com- 
plete betterment  of  his  life  as  he  is  trying  to  live  it. 
He  is  not  a  sinner  because  he  is  a  tenant  and  what  he 
does  as  a  tenant  is  therefore  not  a  misdemeanor, 
but  a  normal  reaction  upon  life.  The  church  can 
help  him  in  purging  his  life  from  the  iniquities  pecul- 
iar to  a  tenant  and  a  dependent.  The  noblest 
motives  must  be  brought  out  and  the  life  he  is  to 
live  should  be  given  its  own  ideals. 

Above  all  the  period  of  exploitation  must  be 
understood  by  the  teacher  and  the  preacher  to  be  a 
preparation,  a  transition  through  which  country 
people  are  coming  to  organized  and  scientific  agri- 
culture. Gradually  the  influence  of  science  and  the 
leadership  of  the  departments  and  colleges  of  agri- 
culture are  being  extended  in  the  coimtry.    Little 

[46] 


THE   EXPLOITER 

by  little,  whether  through  landlord  or  tenant,  farm- 
ing is  becoming  a  profession  requiring  brains,  science 
and  trained  intelligence.  The  country  church  should 
promote  this  process  because  only  through  its  ma- 
turity can  the  country  church  in  the  average 
community  find  its  own  establishment.  The  re- 
construction of  the  churches  now  going  on  corre- 
sponds to  the  exploitation  of  the  land.  The  duty 
of  the  church  in  the  process  of  exploitation  is  to  build 
the  community  and  to  make  itself  the  center  of  the 
growing  scientific  industry  on  which  the  country 
community  in  the  future  will  be  founded. 

The  religion  of  the  exploiter  moves  in  the  giving 
of  money.  Consecration  of  his  wealth  is  consecra- 
tion of  his  world  and  of  himself.  The  church  that 
would  save  him  must  teach  him  to  give.  His  sins 
are  those  of  greed,  his  virtues  are  those  of  benevo- 
lence. His  own  type,  not  the  least  worthy  among 
men,  should  be  honored  in  his  religion.  No  man's 
conversion  ever  makes  him  depart  from  his  type, 
but  be  true  to  his  type.  Therefore  the  religion  for 
the  exploiter  of  land  is  a  religion  of  giving,  to  the 
poor  at  his  door,  to  the  ignorant  in  this  land,  and  to 
the  needy  of  all  lands. 


[47] 


IV 
THE  HUSBANDMAN 

THE  scientific  farmer  is  dependent  upon  the 
world  economy.  He  is  the  local  representa- 
tive of  agriculture,  whose  organization  is 
national  and  even  international.  He  raises  cotton 
in  Georgia,  but  he  "makes  milk"  in  Orange  County, 
New  York,  because  the  market  and  the  soil  and  the 
climate  and  other  conditions  require  of  him  this 
crop. 

He  is  dependent  upon  the  college  of  agriculture 
for  the  methods  by  which  he  can  survive  as  a  farmer. 
Tradition,  which  dominated  the  agriculture  of  a 
former  period,  is  a  disappearing  factor  in  husbandry 
of  the  soil.  The  changes  in  market  conditions  are 
such  as  to  impoverish  the  farmer  who  learns  only 
from  the  past.  Tradition  could  teach  the  farmer 
how  to  raise  the  raw  materials,  under  the  old  econ- 
omy, in  which  the  farmhouse  and  community  were 
suflBcient  unto  themselves.  But  in  a  time  when  the 
wool  of  the  sheep  in  Australia  goes  halfway  round 
the  world  in  its  passage  from  the  back  of  a  sheep 
to  the  back  of  a  man,  the  sheep  farmer  becomes 
dependent  upon  the  scientist.  He  cannot  aflFord 
to  raise  sheep  unless  the  scientific  man  assures  him 

[481 


THE   HUSBANDMAN 

that  in  the  production  of  wool  his  land  has  its  highest 
utility.  "The  American  farm  land  is  passing  into 
the  hands  of  those  who  will  use  it  to  the  highest 
advantage."  ^ 

The  dependence  of  the  scientific  farmer  or  husband- 
man upon  the  world  market  and  upon  the  scientists 
who  are  studying  agriculture  enlarges  the  circle 
of  his  life  from  the  rural  household  to  the  rural 
community.  In  the  rural  community  agriculture 
can  be  taught;  in  the  household  it  cannot.  The 
only  teaching  of  the  household  is  tradition;  the  teach- 
ing of  the  community  is  in  terms  of  science.  The 
country  school  and  the  country  church  take  a  greater 
place  as  community  institutions  just  so  soon  as  the 
farmer  passes  out  of  the  period  of  exploitation 
into  that  of  scientific  husbandry. 

The  husbandman  is  the  economist  in  agriculture. 
He  is  to  the  farm  what  the  husband  was  to  the 
household  in  old  times.  One  is  tempted  to  say  also 
that  the  husbandman  is  he  who  marries  the  land. 
American  farm  land  has  suffered  dishonor  and 
degradation,  but  it  has  known  all  too  little  the 
affection  which  could  be  figuratively  expressed  in 
marriage.  The  Bible  speaks  of  "marrying  the 
land."— "Thy  land  shall  be  called  Beulah  for  thy 
land  shall  be  married."  Side  by  side  in  this  coun- 
try we  have  the  lands  which  have  been  dishonored, 
degraded,  abandoned,  dissolute,  and  the  lands 
husbanded,  fertilized,  enriched  and  made  beautiful. 

» Rural  Economics,  by  Prof.  Thos.  Nixon  Carver. 
6  [  49  ] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

The  husbandman  or  rural  economist  cares  more 
for  qualities  than  for  quantity.  He  works  not 
merely  for  intensive  cultivation  of  the  soil,  but  also 
for  the  preservation  of  the  soil  and  use  of  it  in  its 
own  terms,  at  its  highest  values. 

The  principle  at  work  is  not  the  increase  in  the 
farmer's  material  gains  or  possessions.  The  hus- 
bandry of  the  soil  is  not  a  mere  increase  in  market 
values.  It  is  a  deeper  and  more  ethical  welfare 
than  that  which  can  be  put  in  the  bank.  "Agri- 
culture is  a  religious  occupation."  When  it  sustains 
a  permanent  population  and  extends  from  generation 
to  generation  the  same  experiences,  agriculture  is 
productive  in  the  highest  degree  of  moral  and  relig- 
ious values.  In  the  words  of  Director  L.  H.  Bailey, 
of  Cornell,  "The  land  is  holy." 

This  is  especially  true  at  the  present  time,  when 
the  land  is  limited  in  amount.  Already  the  whole 
nation  is  dependent  upon  the  farmer  in  the  degree 
intimated  by  the  statement  of  Dean  Bailey.  "The 
census  of  1900  showed  approximately  one-third  of 
our  people  on  farms  or  closely  connected  with  farms, 
as  against  something  like  nine-tenths,  a  hundred 
years  previous.  It  is  doubtful  whether  we  have 
struck  bottom,  although  the  rural  exodus  may  have 
gone  too  far  in  some  regions,  and  we  may  not  per- 
manently strike  bottom  for  sometime  to  come."  ^ 

The  service  of  the  few  to  the  many,  therefore,  is 
the  present  status  of  the  husbandman.     The  very 

» "The  Country-Life  Movement,"  by  L.  H.  Bailey. 
[50] 


THE   HUSBANDMAN 

fact  that  one-third  of  the  people  must  feed  all  the 
people  imposes  religious  and  ethical  conditions  upon 
the  farmer.  The  dependence  of  the  greater  number 
for  their  welfare  upon  those  who  are  to  till  the  soil 
brings  that  obligation,  which  the  farmer  is  well  con- 
stituted to  bear  and  to  which  his  serious  spirit  gives 
response. 

This  means  that  with  the  growing  consciousness 
of  the  need  of  scientific  agriculture  there  will  arise, 
indeed  is  now  arising,  a  new  ethical  and  religious 
feeling  among  country  people.  The  church  which 
is  made  up  of  scientific  farmers  is  a  new  type  ^f 
church. 

A  notable  testimony  to  the  influence  of  the  church 
in  developing  husbandry  is  by  Sir  Horace  Plunkett,^ 
who  testifies  to  the  religious  influence  that  led  to  the 
agrarian  revolution  in  Denmark. 

"My  friends  and  I  have  been  deeply  impressed 
by  the  educational  experience  of  Denmark,  where 
the  people,  who  are  as  much  dependent  on  agricul-" 
ture  as  are  the  Irish,  have  brought  it  by  means  of 
organization  to  a  more  genuine  success  than  it  has 
attained  anywhere  else  in  Europe.  Yet  an  inquired 
will  at  once  discover  that  it  is  to  the  'High  School' 
founded  by  Bishop  Grundtvig,  and  not  to  the  agri- 
cultural schools,  which  are  also  excellent,  that  the 
extraordinary  national  progress  is  mainly  due.  A 
friend  of  mine  who  was  studying  the  Danish  system 
of  state  aid  to  agriculture,  found  this  to  be  the 

» "Ireland  in  the  New  Century,"  by  Sir  Horace  Plunkett. 
[51] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

opinion  of  the  Danes  of  all  classes,  and  was  astounded 
at  the  achievements  of  the  associations  of  farmers 
not  only  in  the  manufacture  of  butter,  but  in  a  far 
more  diflBcult  undertaking,  the  manufacture  of 
bacon  in  large  factories  equipped  with  all  the  most 
modern  machinery  and  appliances  which  science  had 
devised  for  the  production  of  the  finished  article. 
He  at  first  concluded  that  this  success  in  a  highly 
technical  industry  by  bodies  of  farmers  indicated 
a  very  perfect  system  of  technical  education.  But 
he  soon  found  another  cause.  As  one  of  the  leading 
educators  and  agriculturists  of  the  country  put  it 
to  him:  'It's  not  technical  instruction,  it's  the  hu- 
manities.' I  would  like  to  add  that  it  is  also,  if  I 
may  coin  a  term,  the  *  nationalities,*  for  nothing  is 
more  evident  to  the  student  of  Danish  education  or, 
I  might  add,  of  the  excellent  system  of  the  Chris- 
tian Brothers  in  Ireland,  than  that  one  of  the  secrets 
of  their  success  is  to  be  found  in  their  national  basis 
and  their  foundation  upon  the  history  and  literature 
of  the  country." 

Every  observer  of  these  Danish  Folk  High  Schools 
testifies  to  their  religious  enthusiasm,  their  patriotism 
and  above  all  to  the  songs  with  which  their  lecture 
hours  are  begun  and  ended.  A  graduate  of  these 
schools  living  for  years  in  America,  the  mother  of 
children  then  entering  college,  said,  "Those  songs 
helped  me  over  the  hardest  period  of  my  life.  I  can 
always  sing  myself  happy  with  them."  The  spirit 
which  pervades  the  schools  was  influential  in  Danish 

[52] 


THE   HUSBANDMAN 

agriculture,  as  expressed  in  the  title  of  Grundtvig's 
best  known  hymn,  "The  Country  Church  Bells." 
Under  such  an  influence  as  this  has  the  agricultural 
life  of  Denmark  taken  the  lead  over  its  urban  and 
manufacturing  life. 

The  modifying  influence  of  husbandry  upon  the 
church  and  its  teaching  is  illustrated  in  the  following 
incident.  A  farmer  in  Missouri  had  a  good  stand  of 
corn  which  promised  all  through  the  summer  to 
produce  an  excellent  crop.  Abundance  of  sun  and 
rain  favored  the  farmer's  hope  that  his  returns  would 
be  large,  but  in  the  fall  the  crop  proved  a  failure. 
The  farmer  at  once  cast  about  for  the  cause  of  this 
disappointment.  He  had  his  soil  analyzed  by  a 
scientist  and  discovered  that  it  was  deficient  in 
nitrogen.  The  next  year  he  devoted  to  supplying 
this  lack  in  the  soil  and  in  the  year  following  had  an 
abundant  return  in  corn.  *'Now  that  experience 
turned  me  away,"  said  he,  "from  the  country  church, 
because  the  teaching  of  the  country  church  as  I 
had  been  accustomed  to  it  was  out  of  harmony  with 
the  study  of  the  situation  and  the  conquest  over 
nature.  I  had  been  taught  in  the  country  church 
to  surrender  under  such  conditions  to  the  will  of 
Providence."  The  country  church  of  the  husband- 
man must  therefore  be  a  church  in  harmony  with 
the  tillage  of  the  soil  by  science.  Like  the  farm 
households  about  it,  the  church  will  possess  a  large 
wealth  of  tradition,  but  the  church  of  the  scientific 
farmer  must  be  open  to  the  teachings  of  science  and 

[531 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

must  be  responsive,  intelligent  and  alert  in  the 
intellectual  leadership  of  the  people. 

A  church  of  this  sort  is  at  West  Nottingham,  Mary- 
land. The  minister  Rev.  Samuel  Polk,  had  been 
discouraged  by  the  inattention  of  his  people  to  his 
message.  He  had  come  to  feel  that  this  is  an  un- 
believing age  and  had  surrendered  himself  to  the 
steadfast  performance  of  his  duties,  the  preaching 
of  the  truth  faithfully  and  the  ministry  to  his  people 
so  far  as  they  would  receive  it.  In  addition  he  had 
the  task  of  tilling  forty  acres  of  land  which  belongs 
to  the  church.  This  he  was  doing  faithfully,  but 
without  much  intelligent  interest. 

An  address  on  the  country  church  in  an  agricul- 
tural college  sent  him  home  with  new  ideas.  He 
saw  that  his  life  as  a  farmer  and  as  a  preacher  had 
to  be  made  one.  He  determined  to  preach  to  farmers 
and  to  till  his  land  as  an  example  of  Christian  hus- 
bandry. He  began  as  a  scholar  by  studying  the 
scientific  use  of  his  land.  He  found  at  once  that 
the  farmers  about  him  were  forced  to  study  the  till- 
age of  their  soil,  because  it  had  been  exhausted  of 
fertility  by  methods  of  farming  no  longer  profitable. 
In  the  first  year  the  preacher  raised,  by  means  of  a 
dust  mulch  through  a  dry  summer,  a  crop  of  one  hun- 
dred and  seventy-five  bushels  of  potatoes.  Mean- 
time his  preaching  had  been  enlivened  with  new 
illustrations  and  he  was  enabled  to  enforce,  to  the 
amazement  of  his  hearers,  new  impressions  with  old 
truths.     The  Scripture  teaching  which  had  become 

[541 


THE   HUSBANDMAN 

dull  and  scholastic  became  live  and  modern,  as  lie 
preached  the  Old  Testament  to  a  people  who  were 
recognizing  the  sacredness  of  land.  His  audiences 
began  to  increase.  His  influence  on  his  people 
very  shortly  passed  bounds  and  reserves.  When 
at  the  end  of  the  season  his  potato  crop  came  in, 
the  farmers  gave  sign  of  recognizing  his  leadership 
as  a  farmer  and  as  a  preacher.  Within  a  year  this 
man  had  taken  a  place  as  a  first  citizen,  which  no 
one  else  in  the  community  could  hold.  Because 
he  was  a  preacher  he  could  become  the  leading 
authority  upon  farming  and  because  he  must  needs 
be  a  farmer  he  found  it  possible  to  preach  with 
greater  acceptance. 

This  pastor  gave  up  the  methods  of  bookish 
preparation  for  preaching.  He  preached  as  the 
Old  Testament  men  did,  to  the  occasion  and  to  the 
event.  He  spoke  to  the  community  as  being  a 
man  himself  immersed  in  the  same  life  as  theirs. 
On  a  recent  occasion  when  a  woman  was  very  sick 
in  one  of  the  farm  houses  and  had  suffered  from  the 
neglect  of  her  neighbors,  his  sermon  consisted  of 
an  appeal  to  visit  the  sick.  That  afternoon  the 
invalid  was  called  on  by  thirty-eight  people  and 
sent  a  message  before  night,  begging  the  minister  to 
hold  the  people  back. 

There  are  a  few  ministers  throughout  the  country 
who  are  successful  farmers.  Many  ministers  are 
speculators  in  farm  land.  They  belong  in  the  ex- 
ploiter class.     One  more  instance  should  be  given 

[55  1 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

of  the  preacher  who  promotes  agriculture.  In  a 
recent  discussion  the  writer  was  asked,  "Do  you 
then  beheve  that  the  minister  should  attend  the 
agricultural  college,"  and  he  replied,  "No.  The 
agricultural  college  should  be  brought  to  the  coun- 
try church." 

At  Bellona,  New  York,  the  ministers  of  two 
churches,  Methodist  and  Presbyterian,  united  with 
their  officers  in  a  farmers'  club,  to  which  others 
were  admitted.  This  club  under  the  leadership  of 
Rev.  T.  Maxwell  Morrison,  makes  the  nucleus  of 
its  work  the  study  of  the  agriculture  of  the  neigh- 
borhood and  the  improvement  of  it.  Lecturers 
from  Cornell  University  are  brought  throughout  the 
year  into  the  country  community  to  take  up  in  suc- 
cession the  various  aspects  of  farming  which  may 
be  improved.  The  market  is  studied,  by  chemical 
analysis  the  nature  of  the  soil  is  determined,  and 
the  possibilities  of  the  community  are  raised  to  their 
highest  value  by  careful  investigation. 

This  farmers'  club  has  social  features  as  well. 
Other  topics  besides  farming  are  occasionally  studied 
but  the  business  of  the  club  is  economic  promotion 
of  the  well-being  of  the  community.  Incidentally, 
it  has  furnished  a  social  center  for  the  countryside. 
The  churches  which  have  had  to  do  with  it  have  been 
enlarged,  their  membership  extended  and  even  their 
gifts  to  foreign  missions  have  been  increased  in  the 
period  of  growth  of  the  farmers'  club. 

The  elements  of  permanent  cultivation  of  the 
[561 


THE   HUSBANDMAN 

soil  are  found  in  greater  numbers  among  the  Mor- 
mons, Scotch  Irish  Presbyterians,  Pennsylvania 
Germans,  who  are  the  best  American  agriculturists, 
than  among  the  more  unstable  populations  of 
farmers.  Those  elements,  however,  are,  simply 
speaking,  the  following. 

A  certain  austerity  of  life  always  accompanies 
successful  and  permanent  agriculture.  By  this  is 
meant  a  fixed  relation  between  production  and  con- 
sumption.^ Successful  tillers  of  the  soil  labor  to 
produce  an  abundant  harvest.  They  live  at  the 
same  time  in  a  meager  and  sparing  manner.  Pro- 
duction is  with  them  raised  to  its  highest  power  and 
consumption  is  reduced  to  its  lowest.  This  means 
austere  living.  Such  communities  are  found  among 
the  Scotch  Irish  farmers.  Lancaster  County,  Penn- 
sylvania, is  peopled  with  them  and  their  tillage  of 
the  soil  has  continued  through  two  centuries. 
-  A  notable  illustration  is  in  Illinois.  The  per- 
manence of  the  conditions  of  country  life  in  this 
community  is  indicated  by  the  long  pastorate  of 
the  minister  who  has  just  retired.  Coming  to  the 
church  at  forty-eight  years  of  age,  after  other  men 
have  ceased  from  zealous  service,  he  ministered 
forty-two  years  to  this  parish  of  farmers,  and  has 
recently  retired  at  the  age  of  ninety,  leaving  the 
church  in  ideal  condition.  "The  Middle  Creek 
Church  is  distinctly  a  country  charge,  located  in  the 

» Professor  Thomas  Nixon  Carver. 
[57] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

Southwest  corner  of  Winnebago  Township,  of  the 
County  of  Winnebago. 

"The  church  was  organized  in  June,  1855,  in  a 
stone  schoolhouse.  The  present  house  of  worship 
was  erected  and  dedicated  in  1861.  Five  ministers 
served  the  church  as  supplies  until  1865,  when  the 
Rev.  J.  S.  Braddock,  D.D.,  became  the  pastor  and 
carried  on  a  splendid  work  for  forty-two  years, 
when  he  laid  down  his  pastorate  in  1907,  at  the  age 
of  ninety." 

"This  community  was  settled  by  homesteaders 
and  pioneers  in  the  early  days  of  the  West.  Many 
of  them  came  from  Pennsylvania  and  some  of  them 
were  of  Scotch  descent.  The  history  of  the  com- 
munity has  been  but  the  history  of  the  development 
of  a  fertile  Western  Prairie  country.  It  was  settled 
by  strong  Presbyterian  men,  and  their  descendants 
are  now  the  backbone  of  the  community.  There 
has  been  little  change,  but  steady  growth." 

The  second  element  in  the  community  of  husband- 
men is  mutual  support.  Professor  Gillin  of  the 
University  of  Iowa  has  described  to  me  the  community 
of  Dunkers  whom  he  has  studied,^  being  deeply 
impressed  with  their  communal  solidarity.  When- 
ever a  farm  is  for  sale  these  farmers  at  the  meeting- 
house confer  and  decide  at  once  upon  a  buyer  within 
their  own  religious  fellowship.  In  the  week  follow- 
ing the  minister  or  a  church  member  writes  back  to 
Pennsylvania   and   the   correspondence  is  pressed, 

» See  Chapter  V. 
[58] 


THE   HUSBANDMAN 

until  a  family  comes  out  from  the  older  settlements 
in  the  Keystone  State  to  purchase  this  farm  in  Iowa 
and  to  extend  the  colony  of  his  fellow  Dunkers. 
Reference  is  made  elsewhere  to  the  communal  sup- 
port given  to  their  own  members  who  suffer  economic 
hardship.  The  serious  tillage  of  the  soil  necessarily 
involves  mutual  support  and  the  husbandman's  life 
is  in  his  community. 

The  third  factor  in  communal  husbandry  is  pro- 
gress. Everyone  testifies  to  the  leadership  of  the 
"best  families"  in  the  transformation  of  the  older 
modes  of  the  tillage  of  the  soil  to  the  newer.  It  is 
impossible  for  the  scientific  agriculturist  to  make 
much  improvement  upon  a  country  community 
until  the  more  progressive  spirits  and  the  more 
open  minds  have  been  enlisted.  Thereafter  the 
better  farming  problem  is  solved.  There  can  be 
no  modern  agriculture  in  a  community  in  which 
all  are  equal.  The  communities  of  husbandmen  will 
be  as  sharply  differenced  from  one  another,  so  far  as 
I  can  see,  as  men  are  in  the  great  cities.  Leadership 
is  the  essential  of  progress.  Gabriel  Tarde  has 
clearly  demonstrated  that  only  those  who  are  at 
the  top  of  the  social  scale  can  initiate  social  and 
economic  enterprises.  The  cultivation  of  the  soil 
for  generations  to  come  must  be  highly  progressive. 
To  recover  what  we  have  lost  and  to  restore  what  has 
been  wasted  will  exhaust  the  resources  of  science 
and  will  tax  the  intelligence  of  the  leaders  among 
husbandmen. 

[59] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

For  this  reason  the  ministers,  teachers,  and  social 
workers  in  the  country  should  be  not  discouraged, 
but  hopeful,  when  confronted  with  rural  landlords 
and  capitalists.  The  business  of  the  community 
leader  is  to  enlist  in  the  common  task  those  persons 
whose  privileges  are  superior  and  inspire  them  with 
a  progressive  spirit.  Without  their  leadership  the 
community  cannot  progress.  Without  their  privi- 
leges, wealth  and  superior  education,  no  progress 
is  possible  in  the  country. 

If  these  pages  tell  the  truth,  then  agriculture  is  a 
mode  of  life  fertile  in  religious  and  ethical  values. 
But  it  must  be  husbandry,  not  exploitation.  Re- 
ligious farming  is  a  lifelong  agriculture,  indeed  it 
involves  generations,  and  its  serious,  devoted  spirit 
waits  for  the  reward,  which  was  planted  by  the 
diligent  father  or  grandfather,  to  be  reaped  by  the 
son  or  grandson.  Men  will  not  so  consecrate  them- 
selves to  their  children's  good  without  the  steadying 
influence  of  religion.  So  that  agriculture  and  re- 
ligion are  each  the  cause,  and  each  the  effect,  of  the 
other. 

If  this  is  true,  then  the  country  church  should 
promote  the  husbandry  of  the  soil.  The  agricul- 
tural college  should  be  brought  into  the  country 
parish,  for  the  church's  sake.  Indeed  the  minister 
would  do  well  if  his  scholarship  be  the  learning  of 
the  husbandman.  No  other  science  has  such  re- 
ligious values.  No  other  books  have  such  immediate 
relation  to  the  well-being  of  the  people.     The  min- 

[60] 


THE   HUSBANDMAN 

ister  is  not  ashamed  to  teach  Greek,  or  Latin, — 
dead  languages.  Why  should  he  think  it  beneath 
him  "to  teach  the  farmer  how  to  farm,"  provided 
he  can  teach  the  farmer  anything?  If  he  be  a  true 
scholar,  the  farmer,  who  is  a  practical  man,  needs 
his  learned  co-operation  in  the  most  religious  of  occu- 
pations, that  the  land  may  be  holy. 


[61] 


EXCEPTIONAL  COMMUNITIES 

MOST  of  this  volume  is  devoted  to  the  average 
conditions  which  prevail  throughout  the 
United  States.  The  attempt  is  made  to 
deal  with  those  causes  which  are  generally  operative. 
It  is  the  writer's  opinion  that  the  causes  dealt  with 
in  other  chapters  are  the  prevailing  causes  of  re- 
ligious and  social  experience  in  the  most  of  the 
United  States.  As  soon  as  the  community,  after 
its  early  settlement,  becomes  mature,  these  causes 
show  the  effects  here  described.  But  there  are 
exceptions  which  should  be  noted  and  the  cause  of 
their  different  life  made  clear.  These  exceptions 
are  represented  in  the  Mormons,  the  Scottish  Pres- 
byterians and  the  Pennsylvania  Germans. 

*'The  best  farmers  in  the  country  are  the  Mor- 
mons, the  Scotch  Presbyterians  and  Pennsylvania 
Germans."  This  sentence  expresses  a  general  ob- 
servation of  Prof.  Carver  of  Harvard,  speaking  as 
an  economist.  The  churches  among  these  three 
classes  of  exceptionally  prosperous  farmers  show 
great  tenacity  and  are  free  from  the  weakness  which 
otherwise  prevails  in  the  country  church.  There 
is  a  group  of  causes  underlying  this  exceptional 
character  of  the  three  classes  of  farmers. 

[62  1 


EXCEPTIONAL   COMMUNITIES 

These  exceptional  farmers  are  organized  in  the 
interest  of  agriculture.  The  Mormons  represent 
this  organization  in  the  highest  degree.  Perhaps 
no  other  so  large  or  so  powerful  a  body  of  united 
farmers  is  found  in  the  whole  country.  They  have 
approached  the  economic  questions  of  farming  with 
determination  to  till  the  soil.  They  distrust  city 
life  and  condemn  it.  They  teach  their  children  and 
they  discipline  themselves  to  love  the  country,  to 
appreciate  its  advantages  and  to  recognize  that 
their  own  welfare  is  bound  up  in  their  success  as 
farmers,  and  in  the  continuance  of  their  farming 
communities.  This  agricultural  organization  centers 
about  their  country  churches.  They  have  turned 
the  force  of  religion  into  a  community  making 
power,  and  from  the  highest  to  the  lowest  of  their 
church  officers  the  Mormon  people  are  devoted 
to  agriculture  as  a  mode  of  living. 

This  principle  of  organizing  the  community  con- 
sciously for  agriculture  results  in  the  second  condi- 
tion of  the  life  of  these  three  exceptional  peoples. 

They  build  agricultural  communities.  The  Mor- 
mons are  organized  by  an  idea  and  by  the  power  of 
leadership.  They  have  recruited  their  population 
through  preachers  and  missionaries.  This  new  pop- 
ulation is  woven  at  once  into  the  fabric  of  the  com- 
munity. They  are  not  merely  employed  in  the 
community:  they  are  married  to  the  community. 
The  organization  on  which  the  Mormon  community 
is  based  becomes  embodied  at  once  in  a  society, 

[63] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

with  its  own  modes  of  religious,  family,  and  moral 
feeling  and  thought. 

These  two  principles  are  discovered  in  the  Penn- 
sylvania Germans.  For  more  than  two  centuries 
they  have  continued  their  settlements  in  Pennsyl- 
vania. They  are  today  a  chain  of  societies  loosely 
related  to  one  another  through  religious  sympathy 
and  a  common  tradition,  but  united  only  in  the 
possession  of  certain  characteristics.  They  also 
are  an  organization  for  agricultural  life,  though 
not  so  consciously  organized  as  the  Mormons. 
Their  societies  are  older  and  they  have  replaced 
with  instinctive  processes  that  which  is  among 
the  Mormons  a  matter  of  logic  and  shrewd  applica- 
tion of  principles. 

The  life  of  the  Pennsylvania  Germans  is  expressed 
in  the  community.  They  have  as  much  aversion 
to  other  people  as  they  have  fondness  for  their  own. 
Their  religion  consists  of  a  set  of  customs  in  which 
to  them  the  character  of  the  Christian  is  embodied. 
These  customs  can  be  expressed  and  embodied 
only  in  the  life  of  common  people  working  on  the 
land.  They  make  plainness,  industry,  and  patience, 
austerity  of  life  and  other  agricultural  virtues 
constitute  sanctity.  It  is  impossible  to  believe 
sincerely  in  their  mode  of  Hfe  and  not  be  a  farmer. 
It  IS  easy  to  believe  the  Pennsylvania  Germans' 
code,  if  one  is  a  farmer,  and  it  is  profitable  as  well. 

The  Scotch  and  the  Scotch  Irish  Presbyterians 
represent  a  third  principle  of  agricultural  success. 

[64] 


EXCEPTIONAL   COMMUNITIES 

Their  churches  are  tenacious  and  their  country 
communities  outHve  those  of  the  average  type.  In 
them  is  represented  in  the  highest  degree,  the  prin- 
ciple of  austerity.  By  this  I  mean,  as  defined  by  an 
economist,  the  custom  of  living  so  as  to  produce  much 
and  consume  little.  These  people  look  upon  life 
with  severity.  They  have  Kttle  sympathy  with  the 
expansive  and  exuberant  life  of  the  young.  The 
men  of  the  community,  who  are  the  producers, 
occupy  a  relatively  greater  position  than  the  women, 
who  are  the  consumers.  They  exemplify  to  a  slight 
degree  the  conscious  organization  for  agriculture, 
and  in  a  high  degree  the  resultant  social  life  which 
we  have  noted  among  the  Mormons  and  the  Penn- 
sylvania Germans;  but  to  the  highest  degree  the 
Scottish  Presbyterians  represent  this  self-denial 
and  rigidity  of  life — which  appears  in  the  others 
also — and  they  embody  it  in  their  creed.  This 
austerity  gives  to  them  a  forbidding  character,  and 
robs  them  of  some  of  the  esthetic  interest  attaching 
to  the  other  two,  but  it  is  possible  that  they  are 
more  nearly  the  ideal  type  of  American  farmer  be- 
cause of  certain  other  traits  possessed  by  them. 

The  Scotch  farmer  has  not  in  the  United  States 
settled  in  communities  or  colonies,  as  he  has  in 
Canada,  but  the  typical  farming  community  of  this 
stock  is  Scotch  Irish.  As  Prof.  R.  E.  Thompson 
has  shown,^  the  emigrants  from  the  North  of  Ireland, 
who  are  themselves  of  Scotch  extraction,  have  colo- 

>  History  of  American  Presbyterianism,  by  R.  E.  Thompson. 
«  [65] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

nized  extensively.  That  is,  they  have  settled  their 
populations  so  as  to  cover  a  territory  and  possess 
it  for  themselves.  But  the  Scotch,  from  whom  they 
derive  many  characteristics,  have  settled  no  colony 
in  the  world  except  in  the  North  of  Ireland.^  The 
peculiarity  of  these  Scotch  Irish  farming  settlements, 
as  shown  especially  in  Pennsylvania,  is  their  capacity 
to  produce  leaders  in  sympathy  with  the  whole 
of  American  life.  The  Mormons  produce  leaders, 
but  their  influence  is  compromised  by  religious  pre- 
judices. The  Pennsylvania  Germans  have  produced 
no  leaders  whom  they  can  call  their  own,  and  very 
few  writers  or  educators.  The  Scotch  Irish,  on  the 
other  hand,  considered  as  farmers,  have  contributed 
an  extraordinary  proportion  of  the  leadership  of  the 
United  States.  They  have  been  able  to  maintain 
their  own  communities  in  the  country  and  to  find 
for  these  communities  a  suflBcient  leadership,  and 
they  have  sent  forth  into  the  general  population  a 
multitude  of  men  for  leadership  in  the  army,  in  the 
legislatures,  in  the  colleges  and  universities,  and 
above  all,  in  the  pulpit. 

In  these  three  types  of  successful  farmers  religion 
is  an  essential  factor.  No  history  can  be  written 
of  the  Mormons,  of  the  "Pennsylvania  Dutch"  or 
of  the  Scotch  Presbyterian  without  recording  their 
religious  devotion,  their  obedience  to  leaders,  to 
customs  and  to  creed.    One  cannot  live  among  them 

» An  exception  to  this  statement  must  be  noted,  in  the  Scotch  settle- 
ments in  Canada  and  Nova  Scotia. 

[661 


EXCEPTIONAL   COMMUNITIES 

without  feeling  the  peculiar  religious  atmosphere 
which  belongs  to  each  of  them.  They  are  admirable 
or  obnoxious,  according  as  one  likes  or  dislikes  this 
religious  character  of  theirs,  but  it  pervades  the 
whole  life  of  the  community.  If  it  be  true  that  there 
is  no  type  of  farmer — except  the  scientific  farmer  of 
the  past  few  years — who  has  succeeded  as  these 
three  types  have  succeeded,  and  there  is  no  country 
community  so  tenacious  as  their  communities  are, 
and  if  it  be  true  that  these  farmers  more  uniformly 
than  other  farmers  are  religiously  organized,  then 
it  follows  that  there  is  an  essential  relation  so  far 
as  American  agriculture  goes,  between  successful 
and  permanent  agriculture  and  a  religious  life. 
The  country  church  becomes  the  expression  of  a 
permanent  and  abiding  rural  prosperity.  Agricul- 
ture is  shown  by  its  very  nature  to  require  a  religious 
motive.  An  element  of  piety  appears  to  be  neces- 
sary in  the  makeup  of  the  successful  farmer. 

In  these  three  types  of  successful  farmer  there 
appears  another  principle  which  is  common  to  them 
all.  They  are  not  only  organized  for  farming,  but 
they  are  organized  as  a  mutual  prosperity  associa- 
tion, based  on  their  consciousness  of  kind.  Prof. 
Gillin  has  called  attention  to  the  habit  of  the  Dunkers 
in  Iowa,  who  are  of  the  Pennsylvania  German  sects, 
by  which  they  extend  their  farming  communities. 

"The  thing  that  is  needed  is  to  make  the  church 
the  center  of  the  social  life  of  the  community.  That 
is  easier  where  there  is  but  one  church  than  where 

[67] 


EVOJ.UTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

there  are  several,  but  federation  is  not  essential. 
Thought  must  be  taken  by  the  leaders  to  make  the 
church  central  in  every  interest  of  life.  I  know  of  a 
community  where  that  has  been  done.  It  is  the 
community  located  south  of  Waterloo,  la.,  in  Orange 
Township.  It  is  composed  of  an  up-to-date  com- 
munity of  Pennsylvania  Dutch  Dunkers.  From  the 
very  first  they  have  made  the  church  central.  When 
these  great  changes  of  which  I  have  spoken  began 
to  occur,  the  leaders  of  that  community  began  to 
take  measures  to  checkmate  the  attractions  of  the 
towns  for  their  young  people.  For  example.  Fourth 
of  July  was  made  a  day  of  celebration  at  the  church. 
When  the  people  of  other  communities  were  flocking 
to  town  by  hundreds,  the  youth  of  that  community 
were  gathering,  in  response  to  plans  well  thought 
out  beforehand,  to  the  church  grounds  where  pat- 
riotic songs  were  sung,  games  were  played,  a  picnic 
dinner  was  served,  and  a  general  good  time  was 
provided  for  the  young.  They  have  also  arranged 
that  their  young  people  have  a  place  to  come  to  on 
Sunday  nights  where  they  can  meet  their  friends. 
The  elders  look  to  it  that  provisions  are  made  for 
the  gatherings  of  the  young  people  on  Sunday  so 
that  they  shall  'have  a  good  time,'  with  due  arrange- 
ments for  the  boys  and  girls  to  get  together  under 
proper  conditions  for  their  love-making.  Even  their 
church  *  love  feasts '  held  twice  a  year,  are  also  neigh- 
borhood gatherings  for  the  young  people.  The 
church  is  the  center  of  everything.     Is  a  farmers' 

[681 


EXCEPTIONAL   COMMUNITIES 

institute  to  be  held  in  the  community,  or  a  teachers* 
institute?  The  church  until  very  recently  was  open 
to  it.  Is  a  farm  to  rent  or  for  sale?  At  once  the 
leaders  get  busy  with  the  mail,  and  soon  a  family 
from  the  East  is  on  their  way  to  take  it.  This 
country  church  has  not  remained  strong  and  domi- 
nant in  the  country  just  by  accident  or  even  by  fed- 
eration. It  has  survived  because  it  had  wise  leaders 
who  have  met  the  changes  with  new  devices  to  attract 
the  interest  of  the  community  and  make  the  church 
serve  the  community  in  all  its  affairs,  but  especially 
on  the  social  side.  Such  thought  takes  account  of 
the  'marginal  man'  too.  The  hired  man  and  the 
hired  girl,  the  foreigner  and  the  tramp  are  welcome 
there.  No  difference  is  made.  There  is  pure  democ- 
racy. With  the  growth  of  the  class  spirit  I  do  not 
know  how  that  can  survive.  These  hirelings  are 
not  talked  down  to;  they  are  considered  one  with 
the  rest.  They  will  some  day  get  enough  to  buy  a 
farm  and  become  leaders  in  the  community,  perhaps. 
The  church  is  theirs  as  much  as  anyone's  else.  It 
looks  after  their  interest,  not  only  for  the  hereafter, 
but  here  and  now.  Under  its  fostering  care  they 
form  their  life  attachments,  it  provides  for  their 
social  pleasures,  it  is  the  center  to  which  they  come 
to  discuss  their  farming  affairs  or  whatever  interests 
them.  And  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  preaching 
has  little  contact  with  life  and  its  interests,  so  strong 
is  the  social  spirit  that  the  preaching  can  be  left 
out  of  account.     What  could  be  accomplished  were 

[69] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

the  preaching  as  consciously  directed  to  forwarding 
the  social  interests  of  the  community  one  can  only 
speculate."  ^ 

Thus  they  work  for  the  propagation  and  extension 
of  their  own  community.  The  Scotch  Presbyterians 
in  like  manner  favor  their  own  kindred  and  their 
kindred  in  the  faith,  though,  I  think,  in  a  lesser 
degree.  The  Mormons  are  consolidated  both  by 
formal  organization  and  by  instinctive  preference 
for  their  own  in  a  multitude  of  co-operating  habits, 
through  which  they  build  up  their  communities 
and  contend  with  one  another  against  their  economic 
and  religious  opponents.  It  is  not  enough  to  say 
that  this  is  clannishness;  it  is  a  mingling  of  kinship 
and  religious  preferences.  It  constitutes  the  strong- 
est form  of  agricultural  co-operation  to  be  found  in 
the  United  States. 

A  Quaker  community  represents  ideal  community 
life.  There  is  none  poor.  The  margin  of  the 
community  is  well  cared  for  by  the  conscious  and 
deliberate  service  of  the  central  and  leading  spirits 
in  the  community. 

At  Quaker  Hill,  New  York,  there  has  been  for 
almost  two  centuries  a  community  of  Friends.  The 
Meeting  has  now  been  "laid  down"  but  the  customs 
and  manners  by  which  these  peculiar  people  maintain 
their  community  life  have  been  wrought  into  the 
social  texture  of  the  present  population  of  Quaker 

» Professor  John  L.  Gillin,  in  American  Journal  of  Sociology,  March, 
1911. 

[70] 


EXCEPTIONAL   COMMUNITIES 

Hill.  During  two  centuries  this  community  has 
cared  for  its  own  members  in  need.  It  was  not  be- 
neath the  dignity  of  the  Meeting  to  raise  money 
and  purchase  a  cow,  early  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
to  "loan  to  the  widow  Irish,"  and  at  the  close  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  the  few  Quakers  and  the  many 
Irish  and  other  "  world's  people  "  took  part  more  than 
once  in  subscriptions  by  which  the  burden  was 
borne,  which  had  fallen  upon  some  workingman  or 
poorer  neighbor  through  the  death  of  horse  or  cow, 
or  even  to  bear  the  expense  incidental  to  the  death 
of  his  child. 

These  Quakers  co-operated  in  their  business  life. 
They  made  themselves  responsible  that  no  member 
of  their  Meeting  should  be  long  in  debt.  From  1740 
for  100  years  and  more,  the  records  of  the  Meeting 
show  that  marriage  was  made  impossible  and  other 
vital  experiences  were  forbidden  by  the  Meeting, 
unless  the  individual  Quaker  paid  his  debts  and 
maintained  his  business  on  a  level  dictated  by  the 
common  opinion  of  the  Quaker  body.^ 

In  1767,  Oblong  Meeting  of  Quaker  Hill,  New 
York,  began  the  legislative  opposition  of  the  Society 
of  Friends  to  the  institution  of  slavery.  This  great 
economic  movement  expressed  the  degree  to  which 
the  Quaker  discipline  merged  the  religious  life  in 
the  economic  life.  This  consolidation  of  religious 
and  economic  life  was  essential  in  the  commxmity 
building  of  the  Quakers. 

*  Quaker  Hill,  by  Warren  H.  TWlson. 
[71] 


EVOLUTION    OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

It  is  surprising  to  many  to  discover  that  the 
"Pennsylvania  Dutch"  were  part  of  the  same  move- 
ment of  population  which  brought  the  Quakers  into 
Pennsylvania.  William  Penn  spoke  German  as  well 
as  English.  His  mother  was  a  German.  When  he 
inherited  his  father's  claim  against  the  British  Crown, 
and  received  from  Charles  the  Second  the  grant  of 
that  extensive  territory  in  America  on  which  he 
launched  his  Holy  Experiment,  he  began  to  adver- 
tise and  to  seek  for  settlers  on  the  Continent  as  well 
as  in  England. 

William  Penn  was  a  Quaker,  and  on  the  Continent 
he  found  immediate  response  in  the  greatest  number 
of  cases  among  the  various  branches  of  Mennonites, 
Anabaptist,  and  other  sects,  who  shared  a  common 
group  of  beliefs  and  experienced  at  this  time  a 
common  persecution.  William  Penn,  therefore, 
reaped  a  harvest  of  responses  in  the  territory  be- 
tween the  mouth  of  the  Rhine  and  the  Alps.  His 
proposal  made  its  own  selection,  and  brought  to 
America  a  population  calculated  like  the  Quaker 
population  for  the  building  of  communities.  The 
largest  single  contribution  was  made  by  the  Pala- 
tinates, who  were  at  that  period  undergoing  extreme 
persecution. 

The  communities  founded  within  the  first  century 
after  the  opening  of  Pennsylvania  have  remained 
to  the  present  day,  and  the  earliest  establishments 
of  Mennonites  and  Quaker  communities  in  Penn- 
sylvania have  been  duplicated  in  the  westward  stream 

[72] 


EXCEPTIONAL   COMMUNITIES 

of  immigration,  especially  in  Ohio  and  in  Iowa. 
These  people  are  roughly  called  the  "Pennsylvania 
Dutch."  Even  when  one  meets  them  in  Michigan, 
Iowa  or  Minnesota,  this  name  clings  to  them,  and 
the  form  of  social  organization  which  they  elaborated 
in  Eastern  Pennsylvania  still  persists. 

This  social  organization  has  varying  character- 
istics. It  is  somewhat  difficult  to  analyze  the  intri- 
cate windings  and  entanglements  of  doctrinal  and 
practical  belief  in  custom  among  the  Mennonites, 
Amish  and  Dunkers.  Old  school  and  new  school 
have  been  formed  in  almost  every  one  of  these  sects. 
Eccentric  and  peculiar  principles  of  belief  in  organ- 
ization have  formed  the  lesser  and  the  least  perma- 
nent groups;  but  there  is  a  common  principle  in  them 
all.  Their  ability  to  form  communities  in  the  midst 
of  hostile  populations  and  adverse  conditions  has 
been  due  to  the  co-operation  between  their  reKgious 
and  their  economic  habits. 

The  "Pennsylvania  Dutch"  have  simple  doctrinal 
characteristics.  They  have  never  worked  out  in 
detail  the  logic  of  their  beliefs.  They  put  the  weight 
of  their  organization  upon  practical  customs,  as  the 
Quakers  did.  In  some  cases,  this  applied  to  clothing; 
in  some  or  all  of  these  sects  to  the  manner  of  speech; 
to  family  customs;  but,  the  one  peculiar  principle 
in  it  all,  which  has  been  vital  to  the  success,  to  the 
persistence,  to  the  wide  extension  of  these  sectarian 
groups  has  been  that  the  religious  life  has  penetrated 
the  economic  life.     They  have  not  permitted  mem- 

[73] 


EVOLUTION   OF  THE   COMMUNITY 

bers  of  their  community  to  be  poor.  They  have 
turned  the  attention  of  their  religious  sympathies  to 
the  economic  margin  of  the  community.  They 
have  enforced  the  payment  of  debts,  and  they  have 
governed  and  controlled  marriage  conditions.  By 
subtle  enforcement  of  custom  having  the  power  of 
laws,  they  have  governed  the  community  in  its  vital 
relations,  and  perfected  the  system  by  which  the 
poorest  man  shall  make  his  hving  and  by  which  the 
richest  man  shall  make  his  fortune. 

Recently,  I  was  in  Lancaster,  Penn.,  and  passing 
through  a  market  I  was  told  by  a  resident  that  all 
the  truck  farming  of  the  market  for  that  city  had 
come  into  the  hands  of  the  Amish,  and  my  friend 
added,  "If  you  go  at  an  early  hour  to  buy,  and  ask 
the  price  of  certain  vegetables,  you  will  probably 
be  told,  *We  do  not  know  the  price  yet;  we  will 
have  to  wait  until  all  the  farmers  come  in.' "  That 
is,  after  two  hundred  and  more  years  of  living  as 
farmers  in  this  section  of  Pennsylvania,  these  sec- 
tarians maintain  their  community  life,  co-operate 
in  the  monopolizing  of  an  industry,  and  in  fixing  the 
price  of  the  monopolized  product  in  the  markets  of  a 
Pennsylvania  city. 

This  survey  of  community-building  peoples  in 
America  may  throw  light  upon  the  recommendations 
of  Sir  Horace  Plunkett  for  the  organization  of  coun- 
try life  upon  an  economic  basis.  The  present  writer 
heartily  agrees  with  him  that  the  center  of  the 
community  must  be  economic.     He  says  that  *'Bet- 

[741 


EXCEPTIONAL   COMMUNITIES 

ter  business  must  come  first"  in  constructive  policies 
for  American  country  life,  but  "by  failing  to  com- 
bine, American  and  British  farmers  persistently 
disobey  an  accepted  law.'* 

Social  division  is  the  impending  danger  which 
threatens  the  future  of  the  American  community 
in  the  country.  For  if  the  analysis  of  agricultural 
success  in  this  chapter  is  correct,  then  the  farmer  is 
exceedingly  dependent  upon  his  neighbor,  and  the 
permanence  of  rural  populations  depends  upon  the 
social  unity  of  the  farmers  in  the  community.  The 
highest  expression  of  this  social  unity  is  in  the  farmer's 
religion.  Worship  thus  becomes  a  symbol  of  agri- 
cultural prosperity.  The  writers  and  the  orators 
have  then  truly  spoken  who  symbolized  the  beauty 
of  rural  life  in  the  church  steeple.  The  farmer 
himself  seems  to  recognize,  in  the  church  spire  rising 
above  the  roofs  of  the  hamlet,  the  symbol  of  prosper- 
ous and  satisfactory  life  in  the  country. 

As  the  tillers  of  the  soil  come  to  the  necessity 
of  co-operation  in  the  new  order  of  life  in  the  country, 
as  the  old  isolation  passes  away  and  the  modern 
farmer  comes  to  recognize  his  necessary  dependence 
upon  other  farmers  in  the  community,  a  common 
place  of  worship  will  become  necessary  to  the  com- 
munity. One  church  will  of  necessity  express  the 
life  of  the  community  and  the  periodic  meeting 
of  all  the  people  in  one  house  of  worship  will  be  the 
highest  and  most  essential  symbol  of  the  feeling 

[75] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

and  the  thought  and  the  aspirations  of  that  com- 
munity after  true  prosperity  and  permanence. 

The  purpose  of  this  chapter  has  been  to  present 
the  general  characteristics  of  the  most  exceptional 
communities  in  the  country.  These  are  Mormon, 
Scotch  Presbyterian  and  Pennsylvania  German. 
By  their  very  names  they  indicate  religious  organ- 
ization of  the  community  and  "birthright  member- 
ship" associations.  They  are  grouped  under  the 
one  principle,  that  in  them  the  religious  organization 
is  an  expression  of  their  social  economy.  Their 
social  and  economic  life  is  under  the  domination  of 
their  religion. 

These  farmers  are  organized  in  the  interest  of 
agriculture.  The  resultant  social  life  constitutes 
a  most  intense  organization  in  which  voluntary  and 
conscious  combination  matures  in  instinctive  union 
embodied  in  blood  relationship,  neighborliness  and 
economic  union.  These  populations  show  the  cor- 
respondence between  economic  and  religious  aus- 
terity. Thrift  takes  the  form  of  dogmatic  repression 
and  finally  their  organization  and  their  relationship 
express  themselves  in  organized  efforts  for  the  well- 
being  of  the  community.  They  deliberately  as  well 
as  instinctively  co-operate. 

It  is  the  writer's  belief  that  these  exceptional 
communities  exhibit  the  principles  on  which  Ameri- 
can life  must  be  organized,  if  the  farmer  is  to  be  a 
success,  if  his  schools  are  to  progress,  his  churches 
to  be  maintained,  and  if  the  country  community  is 

[761 


EXCEPTIONAL   COMMUNITIES 

to  be  a  good  place  to  live  in.  None  of  these  popu- 
lations can  be  imitated.  It  would  be  impossible 
for  a  community  to  take  over  their  modes  any  more 
than  it  could  imbibe  their  motives.  The  study  of 
them  throws  light  upon  the  problem  of  country 
life  in  America.  Above  all  things  it  illustrates  the 
especial  union  of  the  country  church  with  the  social 
economy  of  the  farmer  and  his  household.  It  shows 
that  the  life  of  country  people  is  co-operative,  that 
it  is  undermined  by  division  and  disunion  and  that 
in  the  open  country  where  man  is  least  seen  his  society 
is  most  evident.  The  dependence  of  each  man 
upon  his  neighbor  is  increased  in  modern  times  by 
the  thinning  out  of  the  rural  population  and  the 
increased  economic  burden  laid  upon  the  farmer. 

Finally,  the  exceptional  populations  present  an 
exceptional  victory  over  economic  and  natural 
forces.  They  abolish  poverty  within  their  own 
bounds.  Every  one  of  the  communities  just  de- 
scribed turns  the  power  of  its  common  organization 
upon  the  problem  of  maintaining  the  lower  margin 
of  the  community.  They  who  are  in  danger  of 
falling  behind  are  sustained  and  carried  on.  None 
in  these  communities  is  permitted  to  fall  into  pau- 
perism. The  workingman  without  capital,  whether 
he  be  in  their  meetings  or  only  employed  on  their 
farms,  is  kept  from  want.  The  widow  with  her  little 
house  and  one  cow  is  insured  against  the  loss  of  any 
feature  of  her  small  property.  This  seems  to  me 
to  be  the  greatest  triumph  of  these  communities. 

[77] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

It  is  the  test,  I  am  convinced,  of  their  organizations 
and  of  their  success.  In  this  they  demonstrate  one 
of  the  greatest  possibiHties  of  comitry  life.  They 
show  that  in  the  open  country  it  is  possible  for  men 
to  live  without  the  suffering  and  degradation  of 
poverty. 


[78] 


VI 

GETTING  A  LIVING 

THE  core  of  a  community  must  be  economic. 
The  main  business  of  life  is  to  get  a  living/ 
The  reason  for  existence  of  any  community 
is  found  in  the  living  which  it  supplies  its  residents. 
Men  are  attracted  to  a  community  by  the  increases 
in  their  living  furnished  by  that  community.  The 
first  element  in  the  getting  of  a  living  is  the  securing 
of  daily  bread,  shelter,  clothing  and  the  satisfaction 
of  physical  needs.  It  is  a  mistake  to  think  of  the 
community  as  beginning  in  religious  institutions — 
narrowly  understood — or  in  social  gatherings  or  in 
educational  service.  The  initial  human  experience 
is  the  finding  of  food. 

But  the  getting  of  a  living  is  a  long  process.  A 
living  is  more  than  bread,  and  a  roof  and  a  coat. 
In  quest  of  a  living  men  go  from  the  country  to  the 
town  and  from  the  town  to  the  city.  They  migrate 
from  the  small  city  to  the  large.  In  each  of  these 
moves  they  secure  a  further  element  in  their  living. 
Each  of  these  communities  is  characterized  by  the 
increase  which  it  contributes  to  the  living  of  its 

» "  I  come  that  they  may  have  life,  and  may  have  it  abundantly." — 
Jesus,  in  John  10: 10. 

[79] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

citizens,  but  in  every  community  the  initial  experi-  > 
ence  is  the  securing  of  daily  bread,  shelter,  clothing 
and  material  economic  gains.  Whatever  is  done, 
therefore,  for  the  community  in  a  service  to  all  the 
people  must  have  initial  concern  with  the  purely 
economic  welfare  of  the  people. 

Sir  Horace  Plunkett's  book,  "The  Rural  Life 
Problem  of  the  United  States,"  develops  this  prin- 
ciple very  clearly.  He  shows  that  in  the  Country 
Life  Movement  in  Ireland  it  was  necessary  to  go 
into  the  very  heart  of  the  people's  aspirations,  and 
organize  their  economic  needs. 

It  is  necessary  to  understand  the  word  "economic" 
if  one  would  read  these  pages  aright.  Economic 
matters  are  not  those  of  mere  money.  The  word  has 
a  greater  meaning  than  has  the  word  finance.  It 
connotes  poverty  as  truly  as  wealth,  and  is  greater 
than  both.  The  economic  motive  animates  men 
in  the  quest  of  those  vital  satisfactions  which  the 
individual  craves,  and  the  social  group  requires. 
Professor  John  Bates  Clark  has  somewhere  described 
this  motive  as  the  desire  to  preserve  the  present 
status,  with  slight  improvement,  for  oneself  and 
one's  children  after  him;  the  desire  to  live  on  the 
same  economic  standard  in  one's  own  generation; 
and  to  be  reasonably  assured  of  the  same  security 
for  one's  children.  This  is  not  the  desire  to  get 
rich,  though  in  individual  cases  it  is  changed  into 
a  desire  for  wealth.  But  it  is  a  far  more  general, 
indeed  a  universal  aspiration,  which  inspires  most 

[801 


GETTING   A   LIVING 

of  the  work  of  the  world.  Industry  is  based  on  it. 
Civilization  is  propelled  by  it.  It  is  the  desire  to 
get  a  living  and  the  quest  of  a  living. 

I  believe  that  this  economic  motive  is  religious. 
It  is  the  quest  of  what  a  man  has  not,  but  feels 
to  be  his.  It  engages  his  utmost  efforts.  It  is 
labor  for  his  wife  and  children  and  for  all  his  group 
fellows,  and  therefore  is  involved  in  his  holiest, 
most  self-forgetting  feelings.  It  takes  him  back 
to  his  parents  and  reminds  him  constantly  of  his 
ancestors.  He  forms  his  ideas  of  justice  in  his 
economic  experiences.  His  ultimate  conviction  as 
to  the  goodness  or  the  badness  of  the  world  are  the 
outgrowth  of  his  experience  in  getting  a  living. 
Therefore  his  economic  life  is  his  wrestle  with  nature 
and  with  society.  It  generates  in  him  all  the 
religion  he  has. 

I  suppose  it  was  for  this  reason  that  Jesus  said 
"I  am  come  that  they  may  have  life,  and  that  they 
may  have  it  abundantly.'*  Probably  his  mean- 
ing was  economic,  in  part,  in  the  saying,  "Man 
shall  not  live  by  bread  alone,  but  by  every  word  that 
proceedeth  out  of  the  mouth  of  God."  The  quest 
of  a  living  is  a  satisfaction  of  successive  economic 
wants,  of  which  bread  is  but  the  first.  Every  truth 
that  mankind  knows  involves  men  in  an  economic 
want.  Education  is  one  of  the  most  general  wants. 
It  comes  in  the  series  somewhat  later  than  bread. 
The  love  of  music  is  an  economic  want,  which  comes 
generally  later  than  education.  But  both  are  a 
7  [811 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

part  of  a  living.  I  believe  that  the  quest  of  edu- 
cation and  the  love  of  music  are  religious,  just  as 
much  as  the  desire  for  daily  bread.  One  might 
enumerate  the  whole  series  of  economic  wants,  to 
satisfy  which  is  to  live,  but  religion  is  the  total  of 
the  reflections,  and  the  complex  of  customs  which 
result  from  the  lifelong  quest  for  a  living  among 
common  folk.  At  its  highest  it  is  expressed  by  St. 
Augustine,  **0  God,  thou  hast  made  us  for  thyself , 
and  our  souls  are  not  at  rest  until  we  find  ourselves 
in  thee.'*  Bread  is  the  first  economic  want,  and  God 
is  the  greatest  and  the  last. 

Economic  wants  among  common  folk  are  usually 
the  source  of  religious  feeling.  Few  people  desire 
to  be  rich;  a  lesser  number  strive  to  get  wealth; 
and  very  few  attain  a  fortune.  The  most  of  men 
seek  and  get  a  living.  The  best  of  men,  and  the 
most  religious,  are  those  whose  economic  experience 
brings  them  a  series  of  satisfactions,  beginning  with 
bread,  clothing,  shelter,  education  in  the  essentials, 
music  and  a  little  aesthetic  culture,  and  gradually 
extending  into  higher  forms  of  human  enjoyment. 
The  simplest  religious  craving  is  for  economic 
assurance  of  supply.  "The  Lord  is  my  Shepherd: 
I  shall  not  want,"  is  on  the  most  thumbed  page  of 
the  Bible.  The  play  of  these  economic  aspirations 
among  poor  people  results  in  all  the  simpler  and 
most  general  religious  feelings.  With  the  rise  of 
the  aspirations  of  the  individual,  and  the  ideals  of 
the  group,  toward  higher  satisfactions,  the  religious 

[8«] 


GETTING   A   LIVING 

experiences  should  become  nobler,  more  refined. 
The  penniless  college  student  who  prays  for  an 
education  should  be  a  nobler  worshipper  than  the 
fisherman  who  asks  his  mud-divinity  for  a  good 
catch.  The  group  of  Oberammergau  players  who 
present  the  Passion  Play,  a  highly  complex  satis- 
faction of  wants,  should  be  nobler  believers  and 
worshippers  than  herdsmen  who  out  on  the  hills 
pray  for  the  increase  of  their  flocks  and  for  a  better 
price  for  wool. 

Communities  differ  from  one  another  according 
to  the  living* which  they  supply,  or  the  wants  which 
they  satisfy.  .,  Modern  men  will  not  live  in  a  commu- 
nity that  does  not  satisfy  a  pretty  long  series  of 
wants.  For  instance,  a  graduate  of  the  American 
common  schools  will  desire  bread,  clothing,  shelter — 
all  of  comfortable  quality — and  education  for  his 
children  better  than  his  own,  musical  enjoyment, 
aesthetic  culture,  the  possession  of  some  books,  ac- 
cess to  many  magazines  and  the  reading  of  a  daily 
paper:  and  varied  opportunities  for  the  exercise  of 
the  play  spirit.  The  country  community  satisfies, 
in  most  of  the  United  States,  only  the  first  of  these. 
It  is  a  place  for  securing  food,  clothing  and  shelter 
of  a  comfortable  sort.  Country  people  have  in  the 
past  ten  years  secured  also  a  better  supply  of  read- 
ing matter.  Almost  all  the  rest  of  the  series  is 
lacking.  The  reason  for  the  rural  exodus  is  in  the 
most  of  cases  the  quest  of  education  and  of  music, 
the  craving  for  aesthetic  culture,  and  the  desire  for 

[83] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

recreation.  Country  towns  and  small  cities  therefore 
have  come  to  be  centers  of  education,  of  amusement 
and  of  "culture."  They  are  the  first  step  upward 
on  the  series  of  economic  satisfaction.  Men  who 
have  made  some  money  on  the  farm  "move  into 
town,'*  for  the  satisfaction  of  the  later  wants  in  the 
series. 

None  of  these  wants  is  itself  sinful,  for  all  of  them 
make  up  life.  They  are  the  steps  on  the  way  from 
bread  to  God.  The  business  of  the  teacher  and 
preacher  of  religion  is  to  know  the  wants  of  his 
people:  study  those  which  are  satisfied  in  his  com- 
munity, and  so  to  build  the  community  that  for 
most  of  its  people  and  for  the  most  desirable  people, 
all  the  vital  necessities  of  life  shall  be  satisfied, 
in  the  community  in  which  the  desire  for  bread  is 
satisfied.  The  problem  of  amusement  exhibits 
these  principles  clearly.  Farming  is  austere,  and 
few  farming  communities  have  recreation  adequate 
to  the  demand  of  the  young  people  and  the  working 
people  who  live  on  the  farms.  Agriculture  is  be- 
coming more  systematic  and  more  exacting  in  its 
demands :  and  systematic  work  creates  a  demand  for 
organized  play.  As  this  demand  is  not  satisfied 
in  the  country — indeed  it  is  less  generally  satisfied 
now  than  in  former  times — the  youth  and  working- 
man  from  farming  communities  go  to  the  towns  and 
larger  villages  for  amusement.  These  centers  of 
population  have  a  disproportionate  burden  therefore 

[84] 


GETTING   A   LIVING 

of  cheap  vaudeville  shows,  saloons,  professional 
baseball  games,  and  moving-pictures. 

These  amusements  are,  to  a  degree,  abnormal  in 
character  because  those  who  enjoy  them  are  away 
from  their  home  community,  and  are  suffering  a 
reaction  from  pent-up  desires.  Just  as  the  lumber- 
man or  cowboy  or  sailor  when  he  comes  to  town 
"tears  loose  and  paints  the  town  red,"  so,  in  a  milder 
degree,  the  farmer's  son  or  hired  man,  because  he  has 
at  home  no  recreations  supplied  by  his  church  or 
school,  patronizes  in  the  town  or  small  city  a  cheaper 
and  nastier  theatre  than  one  would  expect  to  find 
either  in  that  town,  or  in  his  home  community. 
The  remedy  is  to  make  the  country  community 
adequate  to  the  wants  of  those  who  live  there.  The 
church  should  promote  recreation.  The  public 
school  should  supply  entertainment  of  a  high  stand- 
ard, both  to  satisfy  the  play  instinct  and  to  elevate 
the  youth's  ideals  of  amusement.  The  community 
which  works  should  be  dependent  on  no  other  com- 
munity for  play. 

Common-school  education  is  a  function  which 
country  communities  have  surrendered  to  the 
centers  of  population.  The  one-room  country  school 
has  long  been  inadequate;  but  the  farmer  has  not 
improved  it,  preferring  to  rely  upon  the  town  schools 
to  which  he  will  remove  his  family  after  he  has 
made  enough  money  on  the  farm.  I  am  told  that 
about  Crete,  Nebraska,  a  recent  census  revealed 
that  half  the'normal  child  population  is  missing  from 

[85] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

the  country  districts;  and  double  the  normal  child 
I)opulation  is  found  in  Crete.  The  quest  of  adequate 
schooling  explains  the  condition,  which  speaks  ill 
for  the  country  community  of  Nebraska. 

In  all  these  cases  religious  service  consists  in  com- 
pleting the  community.  The  supply  of  wants, 
which  are  widely  and  keenly  felt,  is  a  religious  act. 
This  has  been  the  reason  for  the  success  of  the  Du 
Page  Presbyterian  Church  in  Illinois.^  The  minister, 
Mr.  McNutt,  in  a  religious  spirit  so  well  supplied 
the  recreative  life  needed  in  the  community,  that 
the  community  has  been  made  whole.  Just  as 
Jesus  made  sick  or  maimed  men  whole,  as  a  religious 
act,  so  the  community  builder  who  supplies  to  work- 
ing farmers  something  besides  labor  on  the  land,  is 
making  the  community  whole. 

The  perfecting  of  the  common  school  system  in 
McNabb,  by  Mr.  John  Swaney  and  other  Friends, 
and  in  Rock  Creek  by  Mr.  R.  E.  Bone  and  other 
Presbyterians,  was  a  religious  actfor  their  communi- 
ties in  Illinois.  The  farmers  who  have  money  can 
move  to  the  town,  but  to  complete  the  country  com- 
munity is  to  satisfy  the  economic  wants  of  the  poor. 
The  wants  of  the  poor  are  always  of  religious  value. 

Moreover,  the  satisfaction  of  all  wants  in  the 
community  itself  is  a  moral  gain.  If  individiuals 
live  this  life  in  the  bounds  to  which  their  group 
and  family  associations  are  confined,  the  steadying 

^"Modem  Methods  in  the  G)untry  Church,"by  Matthew  Brown  McNutt. 

[86] 


GETTING   A    LIVING 

influelice  of  society  is  at  its  greatest.  Jacob  Riis' 
noted  among  immigrants  the  working  of  a  lower 
sense  of  obligation  due  to  absence  from  accustomed 
home  associations.  Communities  are  compacted 
of  the  strongest  moral  bonds.  If  churches  would 
make  men  righteous  they  cannot  do  better  than 
to  complete  the  community,  especially  in  the  coun- 
try, as  a  place  to  live  in :  making  it  a  place  for  edu- 
cation as  well  as  profit:  of  play  as  well  as  work,  of 
worship  as  well  as  of  material  comfort. 
r  Unfortunately  churches  in  the  country  are  too 
often  recruiting  stations  for  the  cities  and  colleges. 
The  ministers  are  respectable  pullers-in  for  the  city 
show.  Nothing  rejoices  them  so  much  as  to  help 
their  young  men  and  women  find  a  position  in  the 
city;  unless  it  be  to  have  a  bright  lad  or  girl  go  off 
to  college.  When  a  country  minister  was  reminded 
that  all  these  departures  weakened  the  country 
community,  and  that  very  few  of  them  benefitted 
the  lad  or  girl  who  goes  to  the  city,  he  replied  "you 
cannot  blame  them;  there  is  nothing  here  to  keep 
them.'* 

"The  rural  exodus"  has  had  its  Moses  in  the  rural 
college  student,  its  Aaron  in  the  country  minister, 
and  its  Miriam  in  the  country  school  teacher.  These 
three  have  led  a  generation  out  of  the  country  to 
perish  in  the  wilderness.  For  only  a  pitiful  few  of 
those  who  leave  the  country  come  to  prominence  in 
the  city.     The  most  gain  but  a  poor  living  there, 

s  "The  Making  of  an  American,"  by  Jacob  Riis. 
[87] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

and  very  many  go  to  ruin.  The  church  should  be 
the  savior  of  the  community,  as  her  Master  is  of 
the  soul. 

It  seems  to  me  that  this  is  done  in  a  church  in 
Ottumwa,  Iowa,  of  which  Dr.  W.  H.  Hormell  is 
minister.  It  is  in  a  stock-yards  district,  and  the 
daily  occupation  of  many  of  the  members  is  unclean, 
of  some  revolting.  But  the  church  is  a  dynamo  of 
spiritual  forces.  It  supplies  the  experiences  most 
opposite  to  those  of  the  slaughter-house.  A 
half-dozen  chapels  in  surrounding  neighborhoods, 
most  of  them  in  the  country,  are  outposts  of  the 
chiu'ch,  for  each  of  which  a  superintendent  is  re- 
sponsible: and  thus  a  man  who  is  an  underling  at 
the  slaughter-house  is  a  leader  in  the  quest  of  eternal 
life.  The  whole  company  of  workers  with  the  pas- 
tor, constitute  a  spiritual  cabinet  of  the  district. 
It  is  not  surprising  that  this  church  fascinates  men. 
The  minister  cannot  be  persuaded  away,  and  a  like 
devotion  pervades  his  group  of  workers.  The  in- 
tensity of  the  industrial  labor  is  matched  by  the  in- 
tensity of  Bible  study,  prayer  and  evangelism.  The 
degradation  and  repulsion  of  the  leading  industry 
of  the  place  are  equalled  by  the  unworldly  nobility 
and  optimism  of  the  leading  church.  This  church 
does  not  attempt  to  mend  the  community — which 
might  be  found  impossible — but  only  to  serve  the 
community  by  supplying  the  satisfaction  for  spiritual 
wants. 

According  to  the  law  of  diminishing  returns,  the 
[881 


GETTING   A   LIVING 

first  satisfactions  of  any  want  have  infinite  value. 
What  does  this  mean  but  that  they  have  religious 
value?  The  first  drink  of  water  to  a  famished  man 
calls  forth  a  fervent  "Thank,  God."  The  first  book 
printed  is  a  Bible.  The  first  landing  on  American 
soil  was  a  solemn  religious  occasion — and  still  is 
for  the  immigrant.  So  the  first  gains  of  money  are 
of  religious  value  to  the  poor.  The  first  hundred 
dollars  to  a  mechanic's  family  is  invested  in  a 
dozen  benefits.  The  first  thousand  dollars  which  a 
working  farmer  saves  go  into  a  home,  a  piano  or 
books,  or  an  education  for  a  child.  It  is  all  moral 
and  spiritual  good.  Later  thousands  have  dimin- 
ishing moral  and  spiritual  values.  Most  of  the 
churches  and  homes  in  America  were  paid  for  out 
of  the  tithes  of  men  and  women  who  owned  at  the 
time  a  margin  of  less  than  a  thousand  dollars. 

This  is  the  reason  for  the  religious  character  of 
economic  life.  The  most  of  people  spend  their  lives 
with  less  than  a  thousand  dollars.  They  are  poor, 
and  money  does  them  good,  not  harm.  They  need 
to  know  how  to  use  it.  But  the  getting  of  their 
living  is  a  process  prolific  in  religious  feeling,  because 
economic  matters  have  to  them  the  infinite  value 
of  first  satisfactions  of  all  the  simplest  wants  of  life. 

The  salvation  of  the  community  will  be  accom- 
plished in  satisfying  the  higher  wants  of  those  whose 
lower  wants  are  satisfied.  For  those  who  "have 
made  money"  supply  schools;  for  those  who  work 
supply  recreation;    for  the  sick  hospitals;    for  the 

[89] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

invalid  build  sanitariums;  and  for  all  men  supply 
social  life,  the  greatest  need  of  human  life  on  earth. 
For  those  who  are  thus  united  to  the  community, 
and  to  one  another  in  the  intricate  network  of  asso- 
ciations, the  opportunity  of  worship  together,  and 
of  sharing  common  spiritual  interests  becomes  the 
highest  economic  want. 


001 


vn 

THE  COMMUNITY 

f  M'^HE  country  community  is  defined  by  the 
I  team  haul.  People  in  the  country  think  of 
the  community  as  that  territory,  with  its 
people,  which  lies  within  the  team  haul  of  a  given 
center.  Very  often  at  this  center  is  a  church,  a 
school  and  a  store,  though  not  always,  but  always 
the  country  community  has  a  character  of  its  own.* 
Social  customs  do  not  proceed  farther  than  the 
team  haul.  Imitation,  which  is  an  accepted  mode 
of  social  organization,  does  not  go  any  farther  in 
the  country  than  the  customary  drive  with  a  horse 
and  wagon.  The  influence  of  leading  rural  person- 
alities does  not  extend  indefinitely  in  the  country, 
but  disapp)ears  at  the  boundary  of  the  next  com- 
munity. Intimate  knowledge  of  personalities  is 
confined  to  the  community  and  does  not  pass 
beyond  the  team  haul  radius.  Within  this  radius 
all  the  affairs  or  any  individual  are  known  in  minute 
detail;  nobody  hopes  to  live  a  life  apart  from  the 
knowledge  of  his  neighbors;  but  beyond  the  commu- 
nity, so  defined,  this  knowledge  quickly  disappears. 

I  The  author  expresses  his  indebtedness  for  this  definition  to  Dr. 
Willett  M.  Hays  of  the  Department  of  Agriculture  at  Washington. 

[911 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

Men's  lives  are  housed  and  their  reputations  are 
encircled  by  the  boundary  of  the  team  haul. 

The  reason  for  this  is  economic  and  social.  The 
life  of  the  countryman  is  lived  within  the  round 
of  barter  and  of  marketing  his  products.  The 
team  haul  which  defines  the  community  is  the  radius 
within  which  men  buy  and  sell.  It  is  also  the  radius 
within  which  a  young  man  becomes  acquainted 
with  the  woman  he  is  to  marry.  It  is  the  radius 
of  social  intercourse.  Within  this  radius  of  the 
team  haul  families  are  accustomed  to  visit  with  ten 
times  the  frequency  with  which  they  pass  outside 
this  radius.  Indeed,  for  most  of  them,  one  might 
say  that  social  intercourse  is  a  hundred  times  as 
frequent  within  the  team  haul  as  without  it. 

The  average  man  would  define  the  commimity 
as  "the  place  where  we  five."  This  definition  con- 
tains every  essential  element,  locality,  personal  and 
social  relations,  and  vital  experiences.  The  com- 
munity is  that  complex  of  economic  and  social  pro- 
cesses in  which  individuals  find  the  satisfactions  not 
supplied  in  their  homes.  The  community  is  the 
larger  social  whole  outside  the  household;  a  popu- 
lation complete  in  itself  for  the  needs  of  its  resi- 
dents from  birth  to  death.    It'  is  a  man's  home  town. 

This  conception  of  the  community  as  a  vital 
common  possession  explains  the  relation  of  religious, 
educational,  ethical,  economic  institutions  to  one  an- 
other. The  community  is  the  clearing-house  of  all 
these  influences.     It  is  the  medium  by  which  they  ex- 

[921 


THE   COMMUNITY 

change  with  one  another,  in  the  interest  of  human  life. 
The  perfection  of  this  exchange  and  the  abundance 
of  communal  influences  makes  the  community  good 
and  desirable,  or  poor  and  undesirable. 

Sometimes  one  says  that  the  community  is  **a 
good  place  to  live  in."  When  it  is  ample  for  the  needs 
of  individual  lives  men  move  into  it,  and  the  average 
man  finds  there  a  contented  and  satisfied  life.  The 
decay  of  the  community  is  indicated  by  the  de- 
parture of  individuals  and  of  families  in  quest  of  a 
better  centre  for  the  supply  of  vital  human  needs. 
Some  go  to  make  more  money  elsewhere,  some 
depart  for  educational  advantages  and  some  move 
away  because  social  life  is  lacking  or  religious 
privileges  are  not  suitable.  But  these  four  vital 
essentials,  economic,  ethical,  educational  and  re- 
ligious, make  up  the  elements  in  the  community's 
service  to  the  individual. 

The  community  is  sometimes  corrupted  by  vicious 
principles  in  its  construction;  and  then  its  members 
are  in  proportion  defective.  It  produces  in  exces- 
sive degree  idiots,  blind,  deformed,  neurotic,  insane 
or  criminal  individuals. 

The  community,  thus  defined,  is  normally  furnished 
with  certain  institutions  essential  to  the  life  of  the 
people.  In  earlier  days  the  community  was  sufficient 
unto  itself.  Very  little  was  imported.  Everything 
for  use  in  the  community  was  raised  therein  and 
manufactured  in  the  households.  A  system  of 
exchange  gradually  was  effected  through  the  coun- 

[03] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

try  store.  The  country  store  of  1770  in  Duchess 
County,  New  York,  had  an  amazing  relation  to  a 
wide  population.  The  radius  of  the  life  dependent 
upon  it  was  the  same  as  the  radius  around  the 
Quaker  Meeting,  beside  which  this  store  was  placed, 
and  all  the  goods  used  in  the  community  with  few 
exceptions  were  produced  and  manufactured  in 
this  radius  of  the  team  haul  of  ten  miles.^ 

Nowadays  the  country  community  has  normally 
a  store,  a  blacksmith  shop,  a  church  and  a  school. 
In  the  recent  past  certain  classes  of  peddlers  regu- 
larly visited  the  country  community,  though  their 
place  in  the  rural  economy  is  diminishing.  The 
country  store  in  many  communities  is  already  closed 
and  its  maintenance  is  surrounded  with  increasing 
difficulty.  So  long,  however,  as  the  horse  drawn 
vehicle  is  the  type  of  transportation  in  the  country, 
the  elements  of  the  country  community  must  remain 
substantially  the  same.^ 

The  economic  life  of  the  community  is  necessarily 
a  part  of  the  general  economic  life  of  the  population 
as  a  whole.  The  world  economy  has  in  the  past 
hundred  years,  with  the  perfection  of  the  means  of 
transportation,  taken  the  place  of  the  communal 
economy.     In  1910  every  country  community  was 

1  Quaker  Hill,  by  Warren  H.  Wilson. 

« Professor  C.  J.  Galpin  of  University  of  Wisconsin  has  done  precise 
work  of  great  value,  in  deGning  the  country  community,  as  it  centers 
in  the  village.  See  his  pamphlet,  "A  Method  of  Making  a  Social  Sur- 
vey of  the  Bural  Community,''  a  bulletin  of  the  Agricultural  £zperi- 
ment  Station  of  the  University  of  Wisconsin. 

[94] 


THE    COMMUNITY 

obliged  to  manufacture  its  own  raw  products  so 
far  as  possible  within  its  own  limits.  In  1910  it 
was  no  longer  profitable  for  even  a  country  commu- 
nity to  do  so.  The  result  is  that  the  economic  life  of 
the  community  is  usually  expressed  in  a  specified  in- 
dustry to  which  the  whole  community  is  primarily 
devoted.  If  it  be  a  rural  community  this  organiza- 
tion takes  the  form  of  a  "money  crop."  In  the  corn 
belt  there  are  other  products  raised  from  the  soil 
besides  corn,  but  the  world  economy  assigns  to  that 
fertile  section  the  producing  of  corn  as  the  most 
profitable  and  the  simplest  task.  In  the  coal 
region  it  tends  to  the  highest  eiOBciency  for  the 
labor  of  the  region  to  be  concentrated  upon  the  sup- 
ply of  this  fuel,  although  in  addition  the  surface 
of  the  soil  may  be  cultivated  and  in  the  larger  popu- 
lation centers  other  industries  are  coming  in  to 
exploit  the  superfluous  labor.  None  of  these  com- 
petes with  the  primacy  of  the  coal  industry,  which 
the  world  economy  assigns  to  that  community. 

It  is  essential  that  in  every  community  there 
should  be  one  or  more  industries  by  which  men  may 
live.  It  tends  to  the  highest  well-being  of  the  com- 
munity, that  is,  to  its  possession  of  a  maximum  of 
vital  attraction  for  individuals,  that  this  industry 
should  supply  a  variety  of  sources  of  income;  that 
is,  wages,  profits  and  interest.  If  the  community 
can  retain  in  its  own  bounds  the  owners  of  its  indus- 
tries, at  least  in  some  numbers,  and  the  capitalists 
whose  wealth  is  invested  in  these  industries,  it  is 

[95  1 


EVOLUTION    OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

of  great  service.  If  it  can  make  life  attractive  for 
wage-earners  in  these  industries,  the  completeness 
of  that  community  has  its  testimonial  in  this  variety 
and  wealth  of  attraction.  The  weakness  of  many 
American  communities  is  shown  in  their  inability 
to  retain  within  their  bounds  the  owners  of  the  busi- 
nesses and  the  employers  of  labor.  The  ideal  char- 
acter of  some  communities  in  Massachusetts  is 
due  to  the  fact  that  in  the  same  streets  there  daily 
meet  capitalists,  superintendents,  foremen  and  wage- 
earners  who  are  alike  interested  in  the  local 
industries. 

This  power  of  the  community  to  attract  and  hold 
individual  lives,  supplying  them  with  the  vital  neces- 
sities for  which  the  individual  craves,  is  dependent 
in  America  upon  educational  institutions  more  than 
upon  any  other  factor.  The  French  philosopher 
Desmoulin  has  said  that  the  Anglo-Saxon  supremacy 
is  due  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  love  of  the  land  and  of 
education.  The  American  represents  these  two 
passions,  and  of  the  two  the  love  of  education  is  at 
present,  the  stronger.  The  community  which  is 
weak  in  its  schools  will  not  hold  its  people.  The 
generation  who  at  present  are  the  largest  owners 
of  American  wealth  are  eager  for  educational  ad- 
vantage: and  the  incoming  stream  of  immigration 
promises  that  in  the  days  to  come  this  craving  for 
education  will  not  diminish,  but  will  increase. 

The  country  community  has  been  peculiarly  weak 
in  its  educational  facilities,  by  a  strange  dullness  and 

[96] 


THE    COMMUNITY 

inertia  due  to  the  economic  prostration  of  the  farm- 
ing industry.  For  the  two  decades  following  1880 
the  country  schools  have  failed  to  keep  pace  with 
the  city  schools.  Prof.  Foght  says,  "While  the 
public  attention  has  been  centered  on  work  and 
plans  for  the  improvement  of  the  city  schools  a 
great  factor  for  or  against  the  public  weal  has  been 
sadly  neglected.  This  is  the  rural  school.  One- 
half  of  our  entire  school  population  attend  the 
rural  schools,  which  are  still  in  the  formative  stage. 
The  country  youth  is  entitled  to  just  as  thorough  a 
preparation  for  thoughtful  and  intelligent  member- 
ship in  the  body  politic  as  is  the  city  youth.  The 
State,  if  it  is  wise,  will  not  discriminate  in  favor 
of  the  one  as  against  the  other,  but  will  adjust 
its  bounties  in  a  manner  equitable  to  the  needs  of 
both.  Heretofore  the  rural  schools  have  received 
very  little  attention  from  organized  educational 
authority."  ^ 

The  eflFect  of  this  neglect  of  the  country  school 
in  the  face  of  the  constructive  statesmanship  which 
has  led  in  perfecting  the  city  school  is  seen  in  the 
exodus  from  the  country  community  of  very  large 
numbers  of  the  most  successful  farmers.  Evidences 
are  abundant  that  this  exodus  from  the  country 
community  is  primarily  a  quest  of  educational  ad- 
vantage. Not  in  every  case  would  the  departing 
family  confess  that  they  were  seeking  better  schools: 
but  it  is  probable  that  the  majority  of  them  while 

» The  American  Rural  School,"  by  Harold  W.  Foght. 
8  [97] 


EVOLUTION   OF  THE   COMMUNITY 

giving  a  variety  of  primary  reasons  for  moving  would 
assign  the  desire  for  education  as  the  uniform  sec- 
ondary reason  for  departing  from  the  coimtry 
community. 

It  is  impossible  for  the  country  church  to  retain 
its  best  ministers.  Many  reasons  enter  into  this, 
but  always  at  the  top  of  the  list  is  the  desire  for  better 
educational  opportunities  for  the  ministers*  children. 
The  advice  has  become  proverbial  in  theological 
seminaries,  "Go  to  the  country  for  five  years." 
It  is  said  that  in  New  England  there  are  three  classes 
of  country  ministers  and  the  first  of  them  is  the 
bright  young  man  who  will  not  long  be  in  the  country. 

The  ethical,  sometimes  called  the  social  factor 
in  the  community's  life,  is  no  less  essential.  Organ- 
ized work  requires  organized  recreation.  Every 
community  which  has  a  systematic  economy  by 
which  its  residents  get  their  living  is  found  to  have 
a  systematic  though  usually  informal  and  unrecog- 
nized provision  for  recreation.  Somewhere  in  the 
bounds  of  every  working  town  in  America  is  a  play- 
ground. It  is  not  the  result  of  "the  playground 
movement, "  but  of  the  play  necessity  in  human  na- 
ture. The  open  lots  where  the  town  is  not  built  up, 
the  railroad  yard,  the  yard  of  a  factory  or  the  town 
common  are  used  by  common  consent  by  the  young 
people  and  the  working-people  of  the  town  as  a 
playground. 

The  departure  of  many  persons  from  country 
communities  is  due  to  the  lack  of  social  life:  and  the 

[98] 


THE   COMMUNITY 

fascination  of  the  city  for  bright  and  energetic  young 
men  and  women  is  due  to  the  variety  of  recreation 
and  interest  which  it  provides  to  those  who  expect 
to  work  and  are  willing  to  work.  Regular  work 
means  regular  play.  This  fact  cannot  be  too  well 
learned  by  those  who  study  the  religious  and  moral 
life  of  modern  men.  The  need  of  play  is  as  real  as 
the  need  of  food  or  of  sleep. 

This  recreational  life  is  highly  ethical.  The  crav- 
ing of  the  young  and  of  working-people  for  common 
places  of  recreation  is  a  normal  craving  due  to  the 
development  of  conscience  as  well  as  to  weariness 
of  body.  The  exactions  of  modern  labor  create  a 
craving  for  free  and  voluntary  movement.  Those 
who  are  hired  to  work,  and  those  who  if  they  are 
employers  are  bound  to  the  routine  of  the  desk  or 
of  the  bench,  seek  to  breathe  deeply  the  air  of  happy 
and  self-expressive  action.  The  result  is  that  play, 
especially  team  work,  is  highly  moral.  It  is  not 
only  personal  and  self-expressive,  but  it  involves 
co-operation,  self -surrender,  obedience  and  the  corre- 
lation of  one's  own  life  with  other  lives  in  a  glorious 
complex  of  experiences,  unexampled  elsewhere  in 
modern  life  for  their  ethical  value  in  developing 
adolescent  minds  in  the  common  humanities  and 
moralities.  The  playground  is  an  essential  field 
in  the  preparation  of  good  citizens  and  it  is  not  to  be 
wondered  at  that  in  country  communities,  where 
all  provision  of  recreation  is  diflBcult,  and  no  public 
provision  of  playgrounds  is  thought  of  by  those  in 

[99] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

authority,  that  young  people  and  working  people, 
indeed  all  classes  of  the  population,  tend  to  move 
away. 

The  religious  attraction  of  the  community  has 
just  as  real  a  value  for  the  satisfaction  of  individual 
life  as  the  economic  or  ethical  or  the  educational. 
"Mankind  is  incurably  religious,"  and  the  life  from 
birth  to  death  cannot  be  complete  in  average  cases 
without  religious  experience.  Indeed  the  conscious 
testimony  of  men  to  the  community's  religious  value 
for  them  is  greater  than  any  of  the  others.  Religious 
experience  is  indeed  a  form  of  community  conscience. 
To  many  men  the  church  and  the  community  are 
one.  We  cannot  within  our  definition  grant  this; 
but  the  testimony  to  the  religious  character  of  the 
country  community  is  a  classic  in  American  thought. 
The  early  days  of  every  community  are  hopeful 
and  optimistic.  The  tendency  has  been  therefore 
for  each  religious  communion  to  establish  its  own 
church.  These  early  Protestant  churches  were 
expressions  of  the  community  sense  on  behalf  of 
these  people.  The  average  American  can  best 
think  of  the  community  in  terms  of  a  church  and  a 
school.  For  building  up  the  community,  therefore, 
the  maintenance  of  religious  institutions  is  essential. 

We  are  concerned  in  these  chapters  most  of  all 
with  the  American  community  in  the  country.  Not 
because  it  is  more  important,  but  because  it  is  easier 
to  understand  and  affords  a  better  model  for  inter- 
preting other  communities  more  complex  and  highly 

[100] 


THE    COMMUNITY 

organized.  In  it  one  may  see  the  processes  which 
affect  the  town  and  city  communities;  shifting  of 
population,  economic  changes,  educational  improve- 
ment or  retrogression  and  the  processes  of  social 
life  which  express  themselves  in  moral  conditions. 
The  community  is  the  field  in  which  may  be  observed 
the  prosperity  of  the  people  as  a  whole.  It  is  the 
local  exhibit  in  which  the  average  man  shows  what 
has  come  to  pass  throughout  the  commonwealth  as 
a  whole. 

American  rural  communities  have  been  under 
the  influence  of  swift  and  sudden  changes  during 
the  years  of  railroad  development.  This  is  exhibited 
in  the  country  community  very  clearly.  There 
almost  all  the  causes  which  are  at  work  in  the  city 
are  seen  and  their  operation  is  easier  to  observe 
and  to  measure  than  in  a  city  community.  It  is  the 
general  impression  that  the  country  community 
has  suffered  greatly  through  the  loss  of  population. 
This  is  probably  due  to  the  diminishing  agricultural 
activity  of  the  country.  Thirty-four  counties  in 
Ohio  are  producing  less  than  the  same  counties 
were  producing  before  the  Civil  War.  It  is  natural 
that  the  population  of  these  counties  should  be  on 
the  whole  smaller  than  at  that  time.  But  it  is 
more  probable  that  the  social,  educational  and  moral 
life  of  the  people  of  these  counties  who  stayed  in  the 
country  is  slacker  and  less  vigorous  than  in  1860. 
Sometimes  the  population  of  a  community  remains 

[101] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

stationary   but   the   economic   weakness   expresses 
itself  in  a  retarded  social,  ethical  and  religious  life. 

There  is  high  authority  for  the  statement  that  the 
sifting  of  the  country  community  in  recent  years 
has  on  the  whole  improved  it.  Wilbert  L.  Ander- 
son says,  "If  this  emigration  of  the  best  were  the 
whole  story,  it  would  be  impossible  to  refute  the 
charge  of  degeneracy.  There  is,  however,  another 
aspect  of  the  matter.  The  industrial  revolution 
has  put  a  pressure  upon  rural  life  that  is  more 
important  even  than  the  attraction  of  cities.  That 
pressure  has  aggravated  the  severity  of  the  struggle 
for  existence,  and  this  grinding  of  the  mill  of  evolution 
has  crushed  the  weaker  strata  of  the  population. 
Among  those  who  have  gone  are  laborers  and  their 
families,  the  owners  and  occupants  of  the  poorest 
lands — the  famous  abandoned  farms,  and  the  weak- 
hngs  and  dependents.  Many  of  these  have  swollen 
the  crowds  of  the  factory  towns;  others  have  supplied 
unskilled  labor  to  the  cities;  in  not  a  few  cases  they 
have  gone  to  their  destruction  in  the  slums,  where 
residues  of  decadent  folk  finally  disappear.  The 
human  material  that  was  most  susceptible  to  alco- 
hol has  gone  into  the  mills  of  the  gods.  When  all 
is  summed  up,  the  clearance  at  the  bottom  is  not 
less  significant  than  the  loss  at  the  top  of  the  social 
scale.  Natural  selection  works  as  effectually  in 
toning  up  the  species  by  weeding  out  the  worst  as 
*  natural  selection  reversed'  works  for  degeneracy 
through  the  removal  of  the  best.    This  purgation 

[102] 


THE   COMMUNITY 

has  been  overlooked ;  whether  it  offsets  the  injury  in 
the  highest  stratum  is  a  fair  question,  but  obviously 
no  man  is  wise  enough  to  answer  it.  The  opinion 
may  be  hazarded  that  when  the  two  influences  are 
compounded,  it  will  be  found  that  the  average  child 
has  moved  but  a  little  way  up  or  down  the  scale. 
This  is  a  local  question  to  which  there  are  as  many 
answers  as  communities.  The  net  result  of  these 
changes  is  a  gain  in  homogeneousness;  in  the  country 
town  the  dream  of  equaUty  is  nearer  reahzation 
to-day  than  ever  before."  ^ 

It  is  the  writer's  behef  that,  allowing  for  local 
variation,  this  statement  is  the  best  generalization 
of  the  condition  throughout  the  country.  The 
rural  population  has  been  specialized.  The  country 
community  is  finding  its  own  kind  of  people.  It  has 
not  yet,  through  suitable  institutions,  learned  to 
cultivate  its  problems  and  to  train  its  own  leaders. 
That  is  precisely  what  will  be  accomplished  through 
the  building  up  of  the  country  community  with 
which  we  are  here  concerned.  But  already  the 
country  population  is  homogeneous  and  is  selected 
with  a  view  to  fitness  for  the  environment  of  the 
rural  community.  As  the  city  is  breeding  its  own 
stock,  who  are  possessed  with  the  problem  of  city 
life  and  devoted  to  the  interests  of  the  city,  so  the 
country  in  the  shifting  of  modern  populations  is 
coming  to  have  its  own  kind  of  people;  among  whom 
the  problems  of  the  country  community  are  begin- 

» "The  Country  Town,"  by  Wilbert  L.  Anderson,  D.D. 
[103] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

ning  to  be  discussed  and  the  interests  of  the  country 
community  are  being  provided  for  by  suitable 
organizations. 

The  building  of  communities,  therefore,  will 
provide  the  positive  agencies  requisite  for  the  needs 
of  the  present  population  in  the  country.  The 
purpose  of  those  who  serve  the  country  population 
shall  be  the  construction  of  suitable  institutions  by 
which  country  life  shall  be  made  worth  while. 
These  institutions  must  be  economic,  for  the  secur- 
ing of  prosperity  to  country  people,  social  institutions 
which  shall  build  up  their  moral  character  and  life, 
educational  institutions  whereby  the  problems  of 
country  life  shall  be  understood  in  the  light  of  all 
human  life,  and  religious  institutions  which  shall 
crown  the  life  of  country  people  with  hope  and 
animate  the  individual  with  the  spirit  of  self-sacri- 
fice on  behalf  of  all  the  people  of  the  community 
and  of  the  world. 

The  church  should  be  a  community  center.  There 
may  be  other  centers  of  the  community  where  other 
functions  are  assembled,  but  the  church  should  lift 
up  her  eyes  to  the  horizon  in  which  she  lives  and 
comprehend  all  the  people  in  her  service  and  affection. 
This  does  not  mean  that  they  shall  all  be  members 
of  that  church.  The  community  spirit  is  itself 
growing.  Frequently  the  country  community  has 
attained  a  unity  which  the  churches  ignore.  For  the 
church  to  become  a  community  center  means  that 
it  represents  in  itself  the  united  life  of  the  people. 

[104] 


THE    COMMUNITY 

Whatever  be  their  common  interest  that  interest 
dwells  in  the  church. 

In  Hernando,  Mississippi,  the  people  are  united. 
The  interest  of  one  is  the  concern  of  all.  Under  the 
leadership  of  the  families  of  old  land-owners  the 
whole  community  responds  to  common  impulses 
and  is  organized  under  common  ideals.  No  poor 
child  of  either  a  white  or  a  negro  household  is  neg- 
lected or  is  overlooked.  Yet  in  this  community 
churches  have  no  federation  and  ministers  have  no 
regular  means  of  working  together.  A  charity 
organization  was  recently  formed  in  this  community 
as  an  organ  by  which  the  community  should  care 
for  its  poorer  members.  This  society  was  formed 
outside  of  the  churches,  no  one  of  which  had  the 
right  to  be  a  center  for  the  community.  It  is  true 
that  ministers  and  members  of  these  churches  were 
leaders  in  this  community  enterprise,  but  the  churches 
as  organizations  were  not  a  part  of  it,  although  its 
purposes  are  purely  Christian. 

Prof.  Alva  Agee  insists  that  "The  country  church 
does  not  serve  the  community's  needs  as  the  com- 
munity sees  those  needs."  His  meaning  is  that 
when  a  community  enterprise  is  to  be  launched 
the  promoter  of  it  finds  it  necessary  in  the  country 
to  avoid  the  churches,  lest  his  enterprise  be  en- 
tangled in  their  differences.  He  is  embarassed  also 
by  their  lack  of  a  community  spirit.  Frequently 
the  same  persons  who  to  the  church  contribute  no 

[105] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

community  spirit  are  in  the  community  itself  leaders 
of  common  enterprises. 

In  contrast  to  these  conditions  the  instance  of 
Du  Page  Church  at  Plainfield,  Illinois,  of  which  Rev. 
Mjatthew  B.  McNutt  was  recently  the  minister, 
exhibits  the  power  of  a  country  church  to  make  itself 
the  center  of  a  whole  community.  This  church, 
which  in  a  year  became  famous  throughout  the  land, 
has  earned  its  repute  by  ten  years  of  devoted  service 
of  its  minister  and  the  growing  affection  and  union 
of  its  people.  The  church  serves  so  well  the  social 
needs  of  the  community  that  a  social  hall  once 
popular  has  been  closed  and  three  granges  in  suc- 
cession have  attempted  to  organize  in  the  community 
and  have  failed.  Yet  Du  Page  Church  is  passion- 
ately devotional  and  intensely  missionary.  Its 
social  life  is  but  a  legitimate  expression  of  its  com- 
munity sense.  The  minister  and  his  people  have 
had  the  power  to  see  and  to  inspire  a  common  life 
among  the  people  in  the  countryside. 

This  chapter  has  been  intended  as  a  definition 
of  the  country  community.  Its  radius  is  the  team 
haul,  because  the  horse  has  been  the  means  of  trans- 
portation in  the  country.  The  community  is  the 
round  of  Hfe  in  which  the  individual  in  the  country 
passes  his  days :  it  is  his  larger  home.  The  definition 
of  this  greater  household  of  the  country  must  be 
flexible,  but  however  it  be  defined,  it  is  the  charac- 
teristic unit  of  social  organization  among  country 
people.    The  map  of  the  United  States  outside  the 

[106] 


THE   COMMUNITY 

great  cities  is  made  up  of  little  societies  bordering 
sharply  upon  one  another,  diflfering  from  one  another 
socially  and  religiously.  These  little  societies  are 
the  proper  fields  in  which  the  life  of  the  church  and 
the  school  is  lived.  Of  these  small  societies  the 
church  and  the  school  are  the  expressions.  In 
church  and  school  the  country  community  has  its 
highest  life. 


[1071 


vm 

THE  MARGIN  OF  THE  COMMUNITY 

THE  change  of  ethical  consciousness  among 
church  people  in  recent  years  takes  the  form 
of  a  transference  of  interest  from  the  indi- 
vidual to  the  community.  The  literature  of  religious 
and  ethical  thought  is  full  of  appeal  to  "serve  the 
community."  The  working  out  of  any  religious  or 
ethical  force  in  modern  society  is  guided  by  the 
closely  compacted  and  highly  organic  character 
of  present-day  social  life. 

In  the  old  times  in  America,  which  have  so  re- 
cently gone,  men  were  of  one  class;  the  community 
was  homogeneous;  universal  acquaintance  pre- 
vailed. 

The  unit  of  value  in  American  life  until  recent 
years  was  the  successful  man,  because  we  faced 
a  continent  unexplored.  Unpossessed  commercial 
resources  were  before  the  people.  The  standard  of 
the  time  of  Horace  Greeley  was  the  standard  of 
individual  success,  of  initial  utility.  The  town 
boasted  of  the  man  it  had  "turned  out."  The 
church  measured  its  value  by  the  rich  and  benevo- 
lent farmer  or  merchant,  and  by  the  individuals 
whose  piety  or  literary  success  seemed  to  express 

[1081 


THE  MARGIN  OF  THE  COMMUNITY 

the  Kfe  of  the  church.  There  was  an  opportunity 
for  all,  because  crude  resources,  numberless  op>enings 
offered  themselves  to  every  one  who  had  character, 
industry  and  brains. 

Within  a  decade  the  American  people  have  become 
conscious  that  their  resources  are  numbered.  The 
free  lands  of  the  West  are  assigned.  The  tons  of 
coal  under  the  ground  are  estimated.  The  amount 
of  timber,  of  copper  and  of  iron  still  unexploited  is 
known,  and  public  discussion  is  centered  upon  the 
limits  to  the  growth  of  the  American  population, 
and  the  possibilities  of  more  economical  organization 
of  life.  We  can  no  longer  waste  as  once  we  could. 
The  problem  is  now  a  problem  of  economy.  In- 
stead of  the  standards  of  a  time  of  plenty  we  are 
confronted  with  problems  of  bare  subsistence. 

In  times  of  plenty,  when  resources  are  not  yet 
exhausted,  men's  lives  diverge  and  the  individual  is 
the  unit  of  thought  and  feeling.  The  natural  result 
of  a  time  of  plenty  is  the  development  and  the 
endowment  of  personality.  But  in  times  when  a 
bare  subsistence  is  the  condition  with  which  many  are 
confronted,  men  are  drawn  together  and  the  com- 
munity becomes  the  unit  of  thought  and  feeling. 
Industry  as  it  matures  brings  men  together.  It 
becomes  evident  that  they  depend  upon  one  another. 

Men  who  in  a  time  of  plenty  would  seek  an  inde- 
pendent fortune,  under  conditions  of  bare  subsistence 
are  contented  to  secure  employment  and  to  become 
dependent  upon  others.    The  problems  of  subsis- 

[109] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

tence  open  opportunities  for  exploitation  and  the 
stronger  become  related  to  great  numbers  of  weaker 
members  of  the  community.  Thus  men's  lives  are 
intensified,  and  the  conditions  out  of  which  thought 
and  feeling  arise  are  social  conditions  rather  than 
individual. 

The  country  community  under  these  circumstances 
rises  into  new  significance.  In  the  early  pioneer 
days  the  country  community  for  a  similar  reason 
was  much  in  thought  and  feeling,  because  then  men 
were  seeking  a  bare  subsistence  in  the  contest  with 
nature.  This  consciousness  was  lost  as  soon  as  the 
pioneer  days  were  past  and  the  abundance  of  nature 
began  to  enrich  mankind  instead  of  antagonizing 
him.  Now,  again,  the  country  community  has  come 
into  prominence  because  men  are  confronted  with  a 
struggle  to  maintain  an  acceptable  standard  of  living. 

In  dealing  with  a  social  whole,  to  accomplish  cer- 
tain purposes  one  must  deal  with  it  in  social  terms. 
Social  service  is  not  quantitative,  but  quaHtative. 
Ministry  to  a  community  is  not  uniformly  applied 
to  all  the  members.  In  social  service  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  equality  of  all  the  population.  The 
differing  values  of  men  in  a  social  population  are 
determined,  as  other  values  are  measured,  by  the 
working  of  the  law  of  diminishing  returns. 

Roughly  stated,  this  law  is  that  successive  addi- 
tions of  any  valued  thing  bring  ever  diminished 
returns.  The  first  quantity  of  anything  is  of  infinite 
value.    For  later  increments  the  value  is  measurable, 

[110] 


THE  MARGIN  OF  THE   COMMUNITY 

and  ever  less  with  the  increase.  The  application 
of  this  law  in  economics  is  stated  as  follows  by  Pro- 
fessor John  Bates  Clark: 

"Labor,  as  thus  applied  to  land,  is  subject  to  a 
law  of  diminishing  returns.  Put  one  man  on  a 
quarter  section  of  land,  containing  prairie  and 
forest,  and  he  will  get  a  rich  return.  Two  laborers 
on  the  same  ground  will  get  less  per  man;  three  will 
get  still  less;  and,  if  you  enlarge  the  force  to  ten, 
it  may  be  that  the  last  man  will  get  wages  only." 

"Modern  studies  of  value,  show  that  doses  of 
consumer's  goods,  given  in  a  series  to  the  same  person 
have  less  and  less  utility  per  dose.  The  final  utility 
theory  of  value  rests  on  the  same  principle  as  does 
the  theory  of  diminishing  returns  from  agriculture; 
and  this  principle  has  a  far  wider  range  of  new  appli- 
cations." 

"We  have  undertaken  to  generalize  the  law  that 
is  at  the  basis  of  the  theory  of  value.  In  reality, 
it  is  all-comprehensive.  The  first  generalization 
to  be  made  consists  in  applying  the  law,  not  to  single 
articles,  but  to  consumers'  wealth  in  all  its  forms. 
The  richer  man  becomes,  the  less  can  his  wealth 
do  for  him.  Not  only  a  series  of  goods  that  are  all 
alike,  but  a  succession  of  units  of  wealth  itself,  with 
no  such  limitation  on  its  forms,  becomes  less  and 
less  useful  per  unit.  Give  to  a  man  not  coats,  but 
'dollars,*  one  after  another,  and  the  utility  of  the 
last  will  still  be  less  than  that  of  any  other.    The 

[111] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

early  dollars  feed,  clothe  and  shelter  the  man,  but 
the  last  one  finds  it  hard  to  do  anything  for  him."  ^ 

By  this  law  successive  deposits  of  immigrants  and 
successive  gains  in  the  American  population  are 
reducing  the  valuation  of  men  for  religious,  moral 
and  educational  use.  The  first  man  in  any  historic 
experience  is  of  infinite  value.  The  first  American, 
Columbus,  will  be  famous  forever,  but  not  because 
of  any  talents  or  enterprises  of  his.  As  a  matter  of 
fact  he  blundered  in  discovering  America  and  died 
ignorant  of  the  feat  he  had  actually  accomplished. 
But  because  he  was  the  first  white  man  on  a  new 
continent  he  had  infinite  historical  value.  When  the 
early  Europeans  were  increased  to  ten  or  to  one 
thousand  each  of  them  entered  into  fame,  though 
men  like  John  Smith  were  commonplace  enough  in 
their  performances.  Their  fame  is  measurable,  but 
still  great.  When  the  number  of  Americans  was 
increased  to  eight  millions  everyone  thought  himself 
a  great  citizen,  the  founder  of  a  family  and  a  potential 
millionaire.  Those  were  still  the  days  of  exceptional 
personality.  The  type  of  man  in  those  times  was 
the  landowner,  the  pioneer  and  the  statesman.  But 
now  there  are  ninety  million  Americans,  all  the 
valuable  lands  are  assigned,  all  the  best  positions  are 
filled,  every  job  is  taken,  and  ten  million  of  the 
population  are  concerned  about  the  problem  of 
daily  bread.  These  ten  million  people  are  the 
marginal  Americans.     They  are  breadwinners,  and 

« "  The  Distribution  of  Wealth,"  by  John  Bates  Clark, 

[112] 


THE  MARGIN  OF  THE  COMMUNITY 

the  breadwinner  is  the  unit  of  value  on  whom  the 
standard  of  American  social  and  religious  life  is 
measured.  So  far  as  there  can  be  an  American 
type  on  whom  policies  in  public  life  are  measured, 
that  type  is  today  the  breadwinner.  In  the  city 
the  breadwinner  is  a  working  man  or  an  immigrant. 
In  the  country  the  marginal  man  is  the  tenant  far- 
mer; or  a  working  farmer,  though  he  be  the  owner. 
The  marginal  man  represents  the  value  of  all  men 
in  the  community. 

The  law  of  diminishing  returns  works  in  the  factory 
for  fixing  the  wages  in  any  scale  which  prevails 
throughout  a  level  of  pay.  It  is  equally  eflBcient 
in  leveling  men  in  the  community.  The  employer 
does  not  pay  the  working  man  on  any  level  of  wages 
in  accordance  with  the  value  of  the  few  brilUant, 
trusty  or  inventive  men  in  that  group,  but  he  pays 
each  man  just  that  wage  which  he  must  offer  to  the 
last  man  he  hires.  The  marginal  man  standardizes 
the  wage.  The  religious  values  of  men  are 
standardized  not  upon  the  brilliant  or  saintly  or 
accomplished,  not  upon  the  well-to-do  members  of 
the  community,  but  upon  the  poor  who  are  just  able 
to  stand  and  maintain  themselves  in  the  life  of  that 
community. 

The  working  of  this  law  is  not  a  matter  of  per- 
suasion. It  is  the  inflexible  condition  with  which 
religious  and  ethical  institutions  are  confronted. 
Churches  should  therefore  estimate  their  policies 
by  the  responses  of  the  marginal  people  of  the  com- 
9  [113] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

munity.  Religious  standards  of  value  should  be 
measured  by  final  utility,  not  initial  utility.  The 
complaint  against  the  church  today  is  reducible  to 
this :  that  she  standardizes  her  ideals  and  her  poUcies 
in  accordance  with  the  prosperous  and  well-to-do. 
The  eloquence  and  the  character  of  her  ministers, 
the  kind  of  music  with  which  God  is  worshipped, 
the  comfortable  pews,  the  carpets  on  the  floor,  are 
all  of  them  unlike  the  public  hall  which  is  supported 
by  the  dues  of  the  poor.  The  taste  expressed  in 
church  matters  is  rather  literary  and  aesthetic  than 
popular.  The  church  which  would  appeal  to  the 
whole  community  must  standardize  her  work  uj>on 
the  poor  man,  and  make  her  appeal  to  him. 

This  principle  is  not  only  scientifically  correct, 
but  it  works  out  in  practise.  A  minister  who  came 
into  a  well  organized  country  community,  where 
there  were  a  few  land-holders,  many  tenants  and 
numbers  of  farm  lands,  found  that  the  only  appeal 
by  which  the  whole  community  could  be  reached 
was  an  appeal  directed  to  the  marginal  people  in 
the  community.  When  he  sought  the  tenant  farmer, 
he  secured  with  him  the  land-holder,  and  when  he 
went  after  the  hired  man  on  the  farm,  he  secured 
the  farmer  who  employed  him.  When  he  gained 
the  adherence  of  the  boys  and  girls  he  secured  the 
support  of  their  parents,  and  when  he  rendered  serv- 
ice to  little  children,  he  could  safely  rely  upon  the 
gratitude  and  loyalty  of  their  mothers  and  fathers. 

This  was  the  kind  of  work  which  Jesus  did.  He 
[114] 


THE  MARGIN  OF  THE  COMMUNITY 

frankly  made  a  selection  of  the  people  to  whom  he 
should  minister.^  He  knew  no  phrases  about  all 
men  being  equal,  and  he  made  no  profession  of 
impartiality  such  as  today  causes  many  ministers 
to  loiter  among  the  well-to-do,  who  care  not  for 
them.  Jesus  said  he  had  no  time  to  spend  with 
well  people,  because  he  was  sent  to  the  sick.  But 
the  philosophy  of  his  action  was  seen  in  the  fact  that 
when  he  ministered  to  the  sick  he  himself  helped  the 
well.  He  "preached  the  gospel  to  the  poor,"  but 
not  because  he  had  any  prejudice  against  the  rich. 
By  ministering  to  the  poor  he  applied  his  gospel  to 
the  margin  of  the  community.  That  gospel  has  been 
of  equal  value  to  the  rich  man,  because  the  spiritual 
experiences  of  the  poor  are  the  experience  also  of  the 
rich.  The  modern  minister  who  goes  after  rich  men 
specifically,  or  who  goes  after  them  with  the  same 
vigor  with  which  he  seeks  the  poor,  will  receive  but 
a  grudging  welcome.  But  if  he  awakens  the  grati- 
tude and  support  of  the  poor,  he  will  find  himself 
sought  by  the  rich,  and  sustained  by  their  abundant 
gifts. 

Mr.  Gilbert  K.  Chesterton,  the  English  critic, 
has  somewhere  finely  said  that  the  Master  in  his 
words  to  Simon  Peter,  "Thou  art  Peter,  and  upon 
this  rock  I  will  build  my  church,'*  clearly  recognized 
that  Peter  was  a  shuffler  and  a  weakling  and  a  coward 
and  it  was  upon  just  such  common  material  that 
the  church  was  founded.     It  was  not  to  be  an  aris- 

» Luke,  6  :  20  ff ;  15  : 1  £F. 
[1151 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

tocratic  organization.  Its  foundations  were  not 
laid  upon  skill  and  genius  in  human  character,  but 
upon  the  weaker  and  commonplace  traits,  which 
universal  mankind  possesses. 

So  definite  was  the  appeal  of  Jesus  to  the  marginal 
people  of  his  time,  that  he  has  been  twice  criticized 
unjustly;  once  in  his  own  time  by  the  Pharisees, 
and  again  in  our  time  by  the  Socialists.  The  latter 
have  claimed  that  Jesus  was  "class  conscious," 
that  he  was  a  partisan  of  the  poor,  a  proletarean 
radical.  The  unscientific  character  of  Socialism  is 
displayed  in  this  comment  upon  Jesus.  His  appeal 
was  to  the  whole  community,  as  through  Christian 
history  his  message  has  come  uniformly  to  men  of 
all  degrees,  rich  and  poor,  ignorant  and  learned, 
bad  and  good.  The  religious  genius  of  Jesus  is 
shown  in  the  fact  that  he  recognized  what  the  Social- 
ist does  not,  that  to  appeal  to  the  whole  community 
a  prophet  must  address  his  plea  to  the  people  on  the 
margin  of  the  commimity.  His  measure  of  value 
must  be  final  utiHty. 

One  may  go  at  large  into  this  tempting  field  in 
illustrations.  The  artistic  experience  of  mankind 
is  abundant  in  illustration  of  it.  There  is  no  beauty 
of  the  ocean  save  in  its  shores — the  margin  of  the 
boundless  expanse.  Literary  descriptions  of  the 
experiences  of  human  love  are  made  up  of  descrip- 
tions of  the  margins  of  love.  Married  life  is  depicted 
in  courtship,  and  the  sentiments  of  aflFection  are 

[1161 


THE  MARGIN  OF  THE   COMMUNITY 

described  in  scenes  of  parting  and  meeting,  which 
are  the  margins  of  companionship. 

This  principle  should  be  fundamental  in  all  policies 
of  reconstruction  of  religious  and  ethical  institutions. 
In  the  training  of  men  for  religious  service  and  for 
ethical  leadership  they  should  be  accustomed  to 
think  in  terms  of  communal  wholes,  and  this  think- 
ing will  use  as  its  units  of  measure  the  characteristics 
of  the  marginal  life.  It  is  for  this  reason  that 
temperance  reform  in  America  has  been  so  influential 
within  the  past  two  decades.  It  is  a  communal  form 
of  ethics.  It  demands  that  the  community  should 
act  together  in  safeguarding  the  weaker  members 
of  the  community,  the  young  men,  and  the  working 
people.  The  old  temperance  propaganda  was  indi- 
vidualistist.  It  recorded  its  results  in  the  number 
of  persons  who  signed  the  pledge.  Its  results  were 
almost  as  gratifying  if  the  pledges  were  signed  by 
well-doing  and  orderly  people  as  if  they  were  signed 
by  drunkards.  The  modern  temperance  movement 
draws  its  influence  from  its  proposed  effect  upon  the 
agricultural  laborer. 

The  theological  seminary  of  the  past  has  been  a 
literary  institution.  During  the  period  of  its  develop- 
ment the  typical  Christian  was  the  bright  and  aspir- 
ing young  man  in  a  community  of  boundless  re- 
sources. To  such  a  man  books  are  the  interpreters 
of  life.  But  in  the  modern  period  with  the  congested 
population  and  close  social  organization,  human 
fellowship  is  an  experience  of  greater  value  to  most 

fll7l 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

men  than  books.  Since  the  time  of  the  invention 
of  printing  successive  quantities  of  literature  have 
been  given  to  the  world,  and  under  the  law  of  dimin- 
ishing returns  literature  has  come  to  have  for  many- 
very  small  returns.  At  the  time  of  the  Protestant 
Reformation  the  value  of  books  in  the  hands  of  the 
common  people  was  infinite.  For  several  generations 
along  with  the  extension  of  universal  education  this 
infinite  value  of  books  continued  for  the  people 
on  the  margin  of  the  educated  world.  But  nowadays 
everybody  in  American  progressive  communities 
can  read  and  write:  and  in  a  universally  educated 
population  we  arrive  at  the  final  utility  of  books  in 
human  use.  Great  masses  of  poor  people  and  also 
many  people  of  means  use  books  within  narrow  limits 
only.  They  do  not  buy  them,  they  do  not  read 
them,  they  do  not  think  in  literary  terms.  Yet 
they  have  access  to  books  and  they  turn  from  them 
with  a  clear  sense  of  intelligent  preference  for  other 
human  values.  Books  are  to  them  but  an  alphabet 
and  social  life  is  the  story. 

My  own  impression  is  that  the  life  of  the  marginal 
man  is  social  rather  than  literary.  His  religion  will 
be  a  social  religion  rather  than  a  biblical  religion. 
The  weakness  of  Protestantism  is  that  it  stubbornly 
insists  upon  literary  interpretation  of  God  and  upon 
a  bibhcal  ministry,  while  the  population  around 
these  Protestant  churches  exemplifies  the  diminished 
value  of  Hterature  for  spiritual  uses. 

The  religious  and  ethical  service  of  the  days  to 
[1181 


THE  MARGIN  OF  THE  COMMUNITY 

come  must  interpret  the  social  life  of  the  people. 
The  great  mass  of  the  people  care  as  little  for  wealth 
as  they  do  for  books.  The  same  argument  as  to 
the  diminished  returns  of  literature  may  be  repeated 
to  describe  the  diminished  returns  of  private  property. 
The  economic  revolution  since  feudal  days  has 
exhausted  the  values  of  private  property  in  satisfying 
human  need.  The  time  was  when  property  had  an 
infinite  value  for  expressing  personality.  In  days 
to  come  private  property  will  still  have  this  value 
for  many  individuals.  But  among  common  folks 
generally  private  property  does  not  seem  to  have 
boundless  value  for  human  satisfaction.  Working 
men  as  I  have  known  them  do  not  take  pains  to 
get  rich.  They  know  the  way  to  wealth  by  economy 
and  accumulation,  but  they  do  not  take  it.  They 
have  a  vast  preference  for  the  social  intercourse, 
friendly  interchanges  and  mutual  dependence  by 
which  their  life  is  refreshed,  strengthened  and  sus- 
tained. Ethical  policies  of  the  future  while  using 
hterature  and  private  property  as  efficient  imple- 
ments must  interpret  social  life  itself  as  a  flowing 
spring  of  religion  and  morality. 

The  training  of  religious  and  ethical  leaders  should 
be  undertaken  in  the  theological  seminary  and  in  the 
university  in  such  manner  as  to  standardize  the 
influence  of  these  institutions,  by  the  life  not  of  the 
exceptional  man,  but  of  the  common  man.  The 
influence  of  educated  men  must  be  used  to  recon- 
struct churches  and  societies  upon  the  standards 

[1191 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

not  of  the  wealthy,  the  learned,  the  genius  and  the 
well-to-do,  but  by  the  experiences  of  the  poor,  the 
workingman  and  the  immigrant.  The  standard 
in  all  religious  and  ethical  institutions  which  profess 
to  represent  the  community  is  today  graded  up  to  the 
professional  and  exceptional.  The  reconstruction 
necessary  is  to  grade  down  so  that  the  appeal  shall 
be  to  the  poor  and  struggling  man  whose  condition 
is  in  jeopardy,  and  whose  status  in  the  community 
is  as  yet  undetermined.  Institutions  which  appeal 
to  the  community  as  a  whole  must  standardize  their 
policy  to  the  level  of  the  margin  of  the  community. 

The  reconstruction  of  the  theological  seminaries 
is  necessary,  if  they  are  to  fit  men  for  service  in 
communities.  They  render  now  a  service  which  is 
so  valuable  that  one  cannot  pass  over  them  lightly. 
They  train  the  candidate  for  the  ministry  by  a  pro- 
cess which  develops  and  engages  his  piety.  Other 
university  courses  either  ignore  his  religious  feeling, 
or  if  they  develop  it,  do  not  harness  it  to  the  task 
of  social  improvement.  The  theological  seminary 
lays  the  yoke  of  service  upon  the  neck  of  prayer. 
This  alone  justifies  its  existence  as  a  servant  of  the 
church  in  the  community.  However,  the  instruction 
in  the  seminary  is  rigidly  grouped  around  courses 
in  dead  languages;  which  are  jealous  of  instruction 
in  a  living  tongue.  The  history  of  discarded  doc- 
trines and  of  discredited  teachers  is  minutely  taught 
through  months,  to  the  exclusion  of  courses  upon 
modern,  living  people,   whose  religious  experience 

[1201 


THE  MARGIN  OF  THE  COMMUNITY 

is  rich  and  striking.  The  purpose  of  seminary  in- 
struction is  personal  culture  instead  of  efficiency. 
It  is  the  theory  of  the  teachers  wherein  they  disagree 
with  all  other  professional  teachers,  that  "We  do 
not  make  preachers:  the  Lord  makes  them.'*  They 
try  therefore  to  impart  culture  and  personal  distinc- 
tion. 

The  seminaries  need  first  of  all  flexibility  of  courses. 
The  whole  traditional  schedule  should  be  made 
elective.  The  demands  of  the  time  would  then 
have  free  course  in  the  seminary,  and  would  rearrange 
the  instruction  according  to  actual  present  need. 
The  cultivation  of  practical  piety  should  receive 
more  attention.  The  social  life  of  the  students,  in 
close  association  with  their  professors  and  under 
religious  stimuli,  should  be  made  a  more  powerful 
force  than  it  usually  is,  in  creating  a  common  ideal 
of  service  to  which  the  seminary  should  commit 
itself.  Above  all,  the  seminary  of  theology  should 
teach  sociology  and  economics,  as  a  religious  in- 
terpretation. Students  should  after  a  year's  class- 
room work  be  made  to  investigate  and  report  upon 
actual  conditions,  should  be  delegated  to  study  social 
movements,  report  upon  them,  and  to  lead  in  dis- 
cussing them.  They  should  be  trained  in  the  use 
of  statistics,  in  graphic  display  of  conditions,  and 
in  the  use  of  public  reports.  In  the  senior  year  they 
should  be  employed  definitely  in  practical  work  for 
populations,  under  instructors.  After  graduation 
the  young  minister  should,   more   generally   than 

[1211 


EVOLUTION  OF  THE   COMMUNITY 

now,  be  employed  as  an  assistant  to  an  older  minister, 
in  a  large  organization. 

The  influence  of  such  social  training  would  itself 
reform  seminary  instruction.  Thrust  into  a  pres- 
ent-day curriculum,  social  science  is  a  foreign  and 
alien  intruder;  but  its  value  would  soon  be  demon- 
strated and  other  courses  would  be  made  over  in 
new  harmony  with  it.  If  some  courses  be  dropp>ed, 
even  if  whole  chairs  be  abandoned,  it  is  better  than 
that  the  whole  theological  seminary  be  abandoned 
by  students — which  is  the  apparent  fate  hanging  over 
certain  seminaries!  What  has  here  been  said  is  true 
of  the  schools  of  theology  in  all  denominations,  and 
appKes  alike  to  both  the  conservative  and  the  liberal. 

In  conclusion,  the  writer  believes  that  the  church's 
futiu-e  is  with  the  self-resp)ecting  poor.  Jesus  and 
nearly  every  leader  of  a  great  rehgious  movement 
was  of  the  poor  and  labored  with  the  poor.  The 
sources  of  religion  are  those  named  in  the  Beati- 
tudes: poverty,  meekness,  sorrow,  hunger,  ostracism; 
and  those  are  all  social  experiences.  The  service 
of  the  church  should  be  to  these;  and  in  serving  the 
marginal  p>eople,  whose  Kfe  is  composed  of  the 
Beatitudes,  the  church  will  serve  all  men. 


[122] 


IX 

NEWCOMERS    IN    THE     COMMUNITY 

ONE  general  cause  is  bringing  new  people  into 
the  average  country  community.  The  ex- 
ploitation of  land  expresses  the  transition 
from  the  period  of  the  land  farmer  to  that  of  the 
scientific  farmer  or  husbandman.  The  signs  of  this 
exploitation  are  the  retirement  of  farmers  from  the 
land,  the  incoming  of  new  owners  in  some  numbers 
and  of  tenant  farmers  in  a  large  degree,  into  the 
country  community.  The  influence  of  the  absentee 
landlord  begins  to  be  felt  in  communities  in  which 
the  landowner  was  until  1890  the  only  type.  In 
most  of  the  older  states  immigration  from  foreign 
lands  has  not  greatly  affected  the  country  community. 
In  Wisconsin,  Minnesota  and  other  states  of  the 
Northwest  substantial  sections  of  the  community 
are  invaded  by  people  of  sturdy  Germanic  and  Norse 
extraction.  In  New  England  the  Poles,  French, 
Portugese  and  some  Jews  are  settling  in  the  country. 
But  throughout  the  states  of  the  Union  as  a  whole 
the  population,  both  the  newcomers  and  older  stock, 
are  American. 

The  dates  of  this  exploitation  of  land  are,  generally, 
from  1890  onward.     Reference  is  made  elsewhere 

[1231 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

to  the  description  of  this  process  in  the  Middle 
West.i 

Independent  of  these  causes  the  same  process 
has  appeared  in  the  South,  in  Georgia,  Mississippi 
and  in  West  Tennessee,  as  well  as  other  states. 
In  sections  in  which  the  values  of  land  have  not  been 
doubled,  as  in  Illinois  and  in  Indiana  they  have, 
the  same  exodus  from  the  farm  and  invasion  of  the 
country  community  by  new  people  has  taken  place. 

One  cause  of  this  exploitation  of  land  is  the  shrink- 
age in  size  of  the  older  families.  Everywhere  the 
exploitation  of  land  is  the  greatest  where  the  soil 
is  the  richest  and  the  farmers  the  most  prosperous. 
Even  in  the  exceptional  populations  such  as  the 
Scotch  Presbyterians  and  Pennsylvania  Germans, 
this  effect  of  agricultural  prosperity  is  slowly  at 
work. 

In  Chester  County,  Pennsylvania,  and  in  Wash- 
ington County,  where  the  most  substantial  farmers 
in  the  country  are  found,  the  families  in  the  present 
generation  are  small.  Many  of  the  older  stock  have 
no  children.  Families  which  have  retained  the 
title  of  their  land  for  eight  generations  are  losing 
their  hold  upon  the  soil,  by  the  fact  that  they  have 
none  to  inherit  after  them. 

Another  cause  of  this  exploitation  of  land  is  the 
increasing  number  of  small  farms  in  certain  regions. 
This  means  that  in  certain  sections  the  farming 

» "The  Agrarian  Changes  in  the  Middle  West,"  by  J.  B.  Ross. 
[124] 


NEWCOMERS   IN   THE    COMMUNITY 

population  has  a  new  element,  for  the  holders  of  these 
small  farms  are  many  of  them  new  to  the  community. 

The  process,  which  is  made  clear  by  the  census  of 
1910,  is  this.  The  earlier  retirement  from  the  farms 
was  by  sale,  the  farmer  taking  money  instead  of 
land.  The  second  stage  of  retirement  from  the  farm 
was  through  absentee  landlordism  and  the  placing 
of  tenants  on  the  farm.  This  process  has  come  to 
an  end  in  many  sections  of  the  Middle  West,  with 
the  return  of  the  sons  of  the  landlord  to  the  family 
acres  in  the  country,  so  that  there  is  a  sort  of  rhythm 
in  the  flow  of  population  from  the  country  into  the 
town  and  backward  to  the  land.  In  this  process 
there  is  no  invasion  by  new  people,  except  the  tempo- 
rary residence  of  the  tenant  farmer  in  the  country, 
and  some  of  these  have  in  the  process  gained  a  foot- 
ing by  ownership  of  land.  But  this  ebb  and  flow  of 
population  out  of  the  country  community  and  back 
again  has  weakened  and  strained  the  country  church 
and  school  and  has  not  yet  begun  to  strengthen 
them.  There  is  every  evidence  that  with  a  pleas- 
ant and  agreeable  country  life  the  country  commu- 
nity can  retain  the  best  elements  of  this  population, 
which  comes  and  goes.  The  country  church  and 
school  ought  to  take  measures  to  retain  the  best 
of  the  country  population  through  these  changes. 

Through  all  these  causes  the  presence  of  a  large 
proportion  of  aliens  in  the  community  who  are  Amer- 
ican born,  but  locally  unattached  by  birth  or  owner- 
ship, has  effected  great  changes  in  the  country  church, 

[125] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

and  other  community  institutions.  The  State  of 
Illinois,  which  has  a  tenant  farmer  population  of 
more  than  50  per  cent  in  its  richest  sections,  has 
suffered  severely  through  the  loss  of  many  country 
churches.  There  is  no  precise  measure  of  this  loss, 
but  a  sociological  survey  recently  made  in  lUinois 
indicates  that  in  the  past  twenty  years  more  than 
fifteen  hundred  country  churches  have  been  aban- 
doned in  the  State.  This  statement  must  be  ac- 
cepted as  approximate,  but  the  number  is  likely 
to  be  greater  rather  than  less.  This  abandonment 
of  country  churches  has  come  in  the  same  period 
in  which  the  proportion  of  tenant  farmers  has  greatly 
increased.  Reference  is  made  elsewhere  to  a  similar 
condition  in  the  State  of  Delaware,  in  which  the 
churches  of  the  old  land-owners  have  been  abandoned 
and  replaced  at  heavy  expense  with  poorer  churches 
built  by  the  incoming  tenant  farmers. 

Everywhere  in  the  United  States  this  process  has 
in  some  measure  affected  the  country.  It  does  not 
much  matter  whether  the  proportion  of  tenants 
is  increasing  or  decreasing,  the  present  effect  is  one 
of  instability.  In  New  England  where  in  the  past 
ten  years  tenantry  has  been  diminished  ten  per  cent, 
the  country  churches  are  weakened  as  elsewhere. 
The  churches  have  not  yet  had  time  to  recover  while 
the  population  is  in  a  state  of  change. 

The  old  order  in  the  country  is  crumbling.  The 
church  is  an  expression  of  stability.  The  people 
on  whom  the  church  always  depends  for  its  audiences, 

[126] 


NEWCOMERS   IN   THE    COMMUNITY 

its  enthusiasm  and  its  largest  accessions,  are  marginal 
people,  working  men,  adolescent  youths  and  those 
who  are  coming  to  a  position  in  the  community. 
The  exodus  of  these  from  the  country  community, 
or  the  incoming  of  persons  in  these  classes  into  the 
country  community,  has  been  unfavorable  to  the 
country  church  at  the  present  time. 

It  may  be  said  at  this  point  that  a  state  of  transi- 
tion is  for  the  time  being  unfavorable  to  ethical  and 
moral  growth.  Moral  conditions  are  sustained  by 
custom,  and  where  customs  are  in  change,  moral 
standards  must  themselves  be  in  transition.  The 
country  community  is  moral  so  far  as  adhering  to 
the  standards  of  the  past  is  concerned.  But  the 
population  themselves  who  have  to  do  with  the 
country  are  undergoing  extraordinary  moral  change, 
with  incidental  loss,  and  many  of  the  problems  of 
the  United  States  as  a  whole  are  made  more  acute 
by  the  waste  of  the  country  community.  Among 
these  should  be  cited  the  amusement  question  in 
the  small  town,  the  decadence  of  the  theatre  in  the 
cheaper  vaudeville,  the  white  slave  traflSc  and  the 
social  disorders  peculiar  to  unskilled  laborers,  many 
of  whom  come  from  country  communities  of  the 
United  States  and  Europe. 

It  must  be  remembered,  too,  that  the  rural  free 
delivery  and  the  telephone  have  entered  the  country 
community  in  the  past  twenty  years  and  their  effect 
has  not  yet  been  recorded.  It  has  probably  been 
in  the  direction  of  chilling  instead  of  warming  the 

[127] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

social  life  of  the  country.  The  old  acquaintance 
and  the  intimate  social  relations  of  the  country 
community  have  not  been  helped  by  the  telephone: 
and  along  with  the  presence  of  aliens  in  the  commu- 
nity, one-fourth  or  one-half  or  three-fourths  of  the 
population,  the  telephone  has  had  the  effect  of  lower- 
ing the  standards  of  intimacy  and  separating  the 
households  in  the  country  one  from  another.  The 
rural  free  delivery  has  put  country  people  into  the 
general  world  economy  and  for  the  time  being  has 
loosened  the  bonds  of  community  life. 

In  those  states  in  which  the  trolley  system  has 
been  extended  into  the  country,  for  instance 
Ohio  and  Indiana,  the  process  of  weakening  the 
country  population  has  been  hastened.  Sunday 
becomes  for  country  people  a  day  of  visiting  the 
town  and  in  great  numbers  they  gather  at  the  inter- 
urban  stations.  The  city  and  town  on  Sunday  is 
filled  with  careless,  hurrying  groups  of  visitors, 
sight-seers  and  callers,  who  have  no  such  fixed 
interest  as  that  to  be  expressed  in  church-going  or 
in  substantial  social  processes.  For  the  time  being 
inter-urban  trolley  lines  have  dissipated  the  life  of 
t]ie  country  communities. 

[  The  duty  of  the  church  in  the  country  under  these 
conditions  can  be  accomplished  only  under  a  widened 
horizon.  The  minister  and  the  leaders  of  the  church 
must  lift  up  their  eyes.  They  need  not  be  discour- 
aged if  for  the  time  being  they  accomplish  little, 
for  the  period  of  exploitation  must  come  to  an  end 

[1281 


NEWCOMERS    IN   THE    COMMUNITY 

normally  with  the  exhaustion  of  its  forces,  before 
the  better  day  can  come.  But  this  period  is  one  of 
enlargement.  The  units  of  social  life  will  be  spaced 
farther  apart.  The  country  community  will  advance 
as  soldiers  say,  "in  open  order."  This  is  true  for 
the  family  life,  in  which  the  father,  the  mother  and 
the  children  have  greater  freedom  from  one  another; 
as  well  as  in  the  community,  in  which  neighbors 
become  less  intimately  dependent  on  one  another. 
The  church  must  therefore  preach  the  world  idea. 
At  this  time  of  transition  the  country  church  should 
undertake  its  foreign  missionary  service.  The  great 
causes  of  the  Kingdom  which  are  world-wide  should 
be  presented  to  country  people  when  they  are  lifting 
up  their  eyes  from  local  confines  to  look  at  the  world 
and  the  city  and  the  nation.  As  the  daily  paper 
comes  into  the  farmer's  household  the  farmer's 
church  should  interpret  the  history  of  the  time  in 
missionary  terms.  The  literature  of  the  great  mis- 
sionary agencies  should  be  distributed  in  the  farm 
household.  Wherever  the  catalogue  of  the  big 
store  in  Chicago  or  New  York  is  found  on  the  center 
table,  beside  it  should  be  placed  a  modern  book 
expressive  of  missionary  evangelism.  As  the  mind 
of  the  countryman  develops  to  comprehend  the  world 
in  his  daily  thought  under  the  impetus  of  a  daily 
newspaper,  his  conscience  and  his  religious  experience 
should  be  expanded  correspondingly. 
(  In  a  time  of  exploitation  of  land  the  country 
church  should  regenerate  its  financial  system.  The 
10  [  129  ] 


EVOLUTION   OF  THE   COMMUNITY 

system  of  barter  passes  away  in  the  day  of  speculation 
in  farm  land;  and  the  country  church  which  can 
find  means  to  endure  the  period  of  exploitation  must 
put  its  financial  system  on  a  new  basisi^  The  tenant 
farmer  is  crudely  striving  through  problems  of  scien- 
tific agriculture.  He  may,  indeed,  be  a  soil  robber, 
but  by  his  waste  of  economic  values  he  and  other 
men  are  learning  to  conserve.  The  financial  system 
of  the  church  should  be  placed  at  this  time  on  a 
basis  of  weekly  contribution,  for  with  the  tenant 
farmer  comes  system,  cash  payments,  regular  com- 
mercial processes.  The  business  administration  of 
the  church  must  be  made  to  correspond. 

The  country  minister  and  schoolteacher  must 
therefore  become  prophets  of  the  intellect  and  of 
the  spirit,  in  the  new  order.  If  they  cannot  minister 
to  the  new  intelligence  of  the  farmer  and  his  chil- 
dren, their  institutions  will  necessarily  decay.  The 
farmer  who  succeeds  in  the  new  social  economy  of  the 
country  will  not  endure  old  sermons  which  were 
appropriate  in  his  father's  time.  The  emphasis 
must  not  be  placed  on  tradition,  but  upon  inductive 
study.  The  preacher  must  not  feed  the  people  on 
special  instances,  but  upon  representative  cases. 
The  intelligence  of  the  new  type  of  farmer  will  not 
be  satisfied  with  sensations  and  with  the  unusual; 
but  he  demands  to  be  trained  in  standards  of  the 
new  day,  when  science,  system,  organization  and 
world  economy  are  making  their  demands  on  him 

[130] 


NEWCOMERS    IN   THE   COMMUNITY 

and  his  very  soul  is  concerned  in  his  response  to 
those  demands. 

The  task  of  dealing  with  newcomers  in  the  coimtry 
community  is  educational,  financial  and  recreative. 
One  should  add  that  it  is  also  evangelistic,  but  I 
have  in  mind  the  possibility  that  these  newcomers 
may  be  Catholics  with  whom  Protestant  evangelism 
will  not  be  successful.  It  is  possible  also  that  they 
will  be  of  another  Protestant  sect  from  that  of  the 
reader  of  this  chapter,  so  that  to  evangelize  them 
would  mean  proselyting.  The  writer  believes  very 
heartily  in  rural  evangelism.  It  is  an  essential 
process  in  building  the  country  church.  These 
chapters  are  devoted  primarily  to  the  building  of 
the  country  community  and  in  that  process  the 
securing  of  members  for  the  country  church  is  pre- 
liminary only.  Leaving,  therefore,  the  question 
of  rural  evangelism  for  treatment  in  another  place, 
let  us  take  up  the  educational  treatment  of  the  new- 
comer in  the  country  community. 

The  proper  machinery  for  this  education  is  the 
common  school  and  the  Sunday  school.  As  the 
common  school  is  treated  elsewhere,  the  use  of  the 
Sunday  school  in  organizing  the  rural  population 
belongs  here.  Few  churches  realize  the  power  and 
value  of  Sunday-school  training.  I  am  insisting  that 
the  life  of  country  people  is  religious.  The  use  of 
the  Sunday  school  is  to  train  the  young  of  the  com- 
munity in  religion.  All  country  people  accept  the 
Bible  as  a  holy  book.    They  all  believe  in  the  edu- 

[131] 


EVOLUTION    OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

cation  of  their  children  and  in  much  greater  numbers 
than  they  will  respond  for  a  church  service  their 
children  will  respond  to  the  work  of  rehgious  culture 
on  Sunday  at  the  church.  The  Sunday-school  or- 
ganization is  interdenominational.  Its  lessons  and 
its  methods  are  a  common  heritage  of  the  churches 
at  the  present  time.  The  machinery  is  perfect, 
but  the  Sunday-school  leaders  lack  vision  and  they 
lack  the  progressive  spirit.  If  only  the  teachers  and 
ministers  realized  the  value  of  the  Sunday  school  and 
its  acceptance  with  the  people,  there  would  be 
needed  no  other  machinery  for  building  the  country 
community. 

The  Sunday-school  should  be  a  close  parallel  to 
the  day  school.  If  the  day  school  in  the  community 
has  any  progressive  features,  the  Sunday  school 
should  use  these  and  improve  them.  Between  the 
two  there  should  exist  the  closest  sympathy,  not 
formal  or  definitely  organized,  but  actual  and  ex- 
pressed in  parallel  lines  of  work.  Where  the  day 
school  is  graded,  the  Sunday  school  should  accept 
the  same  grading,  strongly  organizing  all  its  classes. 
The  pupils  in  the  Sunday  school  should  pass  by  suc- 
cessive promotions  from  teacher  to  teacher  and  from 
grade  to  grade. 

If  the  day  school  in  the  country  is  unprogressive 
and  is  taught  by  a  succession  of  indifferent  persons, 
the  Sunday  school  should  practise  under  the  guidance 
of  religious  leaders  those  principles  of  modern  peda- 
gogy which  should  be  used  in  the  common  schools. 

[132] 


NEWCOMERS    IN   THE    COMMUNITY 

Graded  lessons,  the  organization  of  material  and  pro- 
gressive development  of  religious  truth  from  the 
simpler  to  the  more  complex,  should  find  their  place 
in  every  Sunday  school.  The  opportunity  for  serv- 
ice to  the  whole  community  thus  offered  through  the 
Sunday  school  is  excelled  by  none  in  the  country 
community. 

The  upper  classes  of  the  Sunday  school  should  be 
organized.  Young  men  and  women  especially,  who 
are  in  danger  of  finding  the  Sunday  school  irksome 
because  their  intelligence  has  passed  beyond  its 
control,  should  be  organized  in  classes  which  on 
week  days  have  a  club  or  society  character.  The 
Sunday  school  should  use  as  an  ally  their  tendency 
to  organization  and  should  satisfy  their  social  needs 
by  giving  them  regular  and  approved  opportunities 
for  meeting  and  for  pleasure. 

Another  principle  which  the  Sunday  school  can 
practise  for  the  benefit  of  the  community  is  the 
centralization  of  religious  teaching.  Even  if  the 
common  schools  are  not  centralized,  the  children  for 
the  Sunday  school  should  be  brought  to  the  church 
from  outlying  regions  in  hired  wagons  every  week. 
It  is  better  that  a  large  Sunday  school  be  maintained 
under  efficient  leadership  than  that  a  number  of 
small  schools  with  indifferent  teachers  should  be 
maintained  in  various  school  districts.  The  larger 
body  can  have  better  leadership.  It  is  more  closely 
under  the  supervision  of  the  minister,  who  is  generally 
the  superior  in  education  of  the  laymen,  and  the 

[1331 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

social  value  of  the  meetings  of  the  Sunday  school 
will  be  greater  in  the  larger  body.  All  the  arguments 
which  make  for  the  centralization  of  the  day  school 
have  force  for  the  consolidation  of  Sunday  schools 
in  one  large  school. 

The  Sunday  school  offers  a  basis  for  church  fed- 
eration. In  the  community  it  is  frequently  possible 
for  Sunday  schools  to  be  united  and  for  the  advan- 
tages of  this  common  teaching  to  be  made  even  greater 
because  all  the  children  of  the  various  churches  are 
in  one  body.  The  best  leadership  and  the  best 
teachers  are  thus  secured  and  the  community  spirit 
is  cultivated  through  the  young  people  and  more 
loosely  attached  members  of  the  community. 

The  older  classes  of  the  Sunday  school  on  a  basis 
of  study  of  the  Bible  should"  be  organized  for  prac- 
tical ends.  The  adult  Bible  class  can  be  made  to 
have  all  the  influence  of  the  grange  in  the  country 
community.  The  fathers  and  mothers  of  the  com- 
munity may  meet  throughout  the  week  socially. 
They  may  undertake  together  the  study  of  the  eco- 
nomic life  of  the  community.  Lecturers  from  the 
agricultural  college,  representatives  of  the  Play 
Ground  Movement,  of  the  county  work  of  the 
Y.  M.  C.  A.,  of  historical  societies  interested  in  the 
community's  past  and  other  representatives  of 
national  movements,  may  be  welcomed  and  heard 
by  this  organized  class,  the  basis  of  which  is  religious 
education. 

What  I  am  urging  may  be  accomplished  by  any 
[134] 


NEWCOMERS    IN   THE    COMMUNITY 

church  in  some  measure,  however  divided  the  com- 
munity may  be.  It  is  the  business  of  the  individual 
church  which  has  a  vision  of  the  community  as  a 
whole  to  act  as  if  it  were  a  federation  of  churches. 
Frequently  ministers  are  in  favor  of  church  federa- 
tion, as  if  that  process  were  an  end  in  itself.  The 
writer  believes  that  the  individual  church  can  accom- 
plish the  ends  of  federation  if  the  union  of  churches 
can  do  so.  The  best  means  for  effecting  federation 
of  churches  is  to  practise  the  program  of  federation 
until  it  shall  come  about. 

The  community  made  up  in  a  degree  of  new  fami- 
lies and  the  community  in  which  the  newcomers  are 
young  men  and  women,  children  of  the  residents, 
are  bound  to  educate  these  invaders  of  the  com- 
munity, whether  they  come  from  without  or  whether 
they  come  by  "birthright  membership,"  in  the  spirit 
of  benevolence.  The  giving  of  money  to  public 
uses  is  one  of  the  cherished  social  forces  of  our  time. 
The  country  community  is  just  entering  into  the 
day  of  cash.  The  period  of  barter  is  over.  The 
farmer  therefore  needs  in  his  ethical  and  his  religious 
training,  to  have  definite  culture  as  a  philanthropist. 
The  future  of  the  farm-hand  in  America  is  still  very 
hopeful.  The  tenant  farmer  expects  to  be  an  owner. 
The  farmer's  son  believes  himself  to  have  a  future. 
These  hopes  from  earliest  years  should  be  disciplined 
by  the  practise  of  giving.  For  this  end  the  church 
is  a  rarely  well  fitted  means.  The  financial  system 
of  the  church  must  be  made  democratic.     The  cus- 

[1351 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

torn  of  renting  pews  belonged  in  the  land-farmer 
period.  The  writer  does  not  suggest  that  it  be 
abolished  because  it  can  often  serve  a  more  demo- 
cratic purpose  in  its  mature  forms  under  careful 
supervision  than  any  substitute,  but  it  is  all  important 
that  the  country  church  be  a  training-school  in  the 
consecration  of  money  to  the  uses  of  the  community 
and  of  the  kingdom  of  God. 

For  the  average  countryman  the  kingdom  of  God 
should  be  embodied  in  the  country  community. 
This  is  not  to  say  that  his  vision  should  be  narrow. 
On  the  contrary  his  vision  is  often  of  the  spread- 
eagle  sort.  He  overlooks  the  opportunities  for 
benevolence  which  are  near  at  hand.  He  believes 
in  foreign  missions  sometimes,  and  contributes  im- 
pulsively to  the  support  of  men  in  China  who  are 
paid  a  better  salary  than  the  pastor  in  his  own  com- 
munity. He  applauds  the  gifts  of  millionaires  and 
of  city  people  generally  to  hospitals,  but  he  ignores 
the  ravages  of  disease  in  his  own  community.  The 
divine  imperative  is  that  the  country  community 
be  first  organized,  by  those  who  live  there,  for  local 
well-being.  For  this,  contributions  of  money  are 
necessary  and  they  must  be  made  by  all  in  the  com- 
munity. 

The  question  has  been  raised  frequently  whether 
an  endowment  is  not  necessary  for  the  country  church. 
The  writer  began  his  ministry  in  a  country  church 
which  was  generously  endowed.  He  still  believes 
in  the  value  of  endowment  for  some  country  commu- 

[136] 


NEWCOMERS    IN   THE   COMMUNITY 

nities.  Ex-President  Eliot  of  Harvard  recently 
commended  the  principle  of  endowment  to  the  New 
England  Country  Church  Association,  as  a  solution 
of  the  rural  problem.  President  Butterfield  of 
Massachusetts  Agricultural  College  has  emphasized 
the  same  principle.  It  is  quite  likely  that  in  the 
Eastern  States  where  the  country  community  has 
been  depleted  by  the  departure  of  an  extraordinary 
number  of  families  and  individuals,  an  endowment 
would  be  of  value  for  the  country  church.  One  must 
not  hold  to  a  theoretic  opposition  to  such  a  method. 
The  important  thing  is  to  provide  a  trained  pastor 
for  the  country  community.  In  these  Eastern 
communities  a  larger  proportion  of  the  former  mem- 
bers of  the  community  have  prospered  than  in 
Western  communities.  Many  of  them  are  very 
rich.  In  these  cases  it  is  but  natural  that  an  en- 
dowed church  in  the  country  community  express 
the  ministry  of  the  more  prosperous  citizen  to  his 
poorer  brethren,  but  everybody  knows  that  these 
depleted  communities — I  will  not  say  these  exces- 
sive fortunes — are  among  the  most  lamentable 
factors  in  American  life. 

The  endowment  of  the  church,  however,  is  a  very 
poor  apology  for  a  bad  situation.  It  has  but  limited 
use,  and  the  creation  of  a  large  fund  to  be  used  in 
the  country  community  necessitates  careful  super- 
vision by  men  of  such  business  ability  as  are  not 
usually  found  in  a  country  community.  To  remedy 
such  conditions  as  those  with  which  President  Eliot 

[1371 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

and  President  Butterfield  are  most  familiar  is  a 
specific  problem.  It  is  not  the  general  situation 
throughout  the  United  States.  The  purpose  of 
these  chapters  is  to  make  plain  the  way  by  which 
the  average  American  community  may  escape  deple- 
tion, may  retain  the  leadership  of  its  best  minds  and 
may  prosper  in  a  democratic  way.  I  am  interested 
more  in  training  the  country  population  for  the  future 
than  in  mending  the  mistakes  of  the  past.  But  I 
believe  that  for  depleted  country  communities  in 
New  England,  New  York  and  Pennsylvania  an  en- 
dowment of  the  country  church  would  in  many 
instances  be  effective:  and  for  them  alone. 

Let  the  country  church  undertake  its  financial 
problem  in  a  business-like  way.  At  the  beginning 
of  the  year  make  a  budget  of  all  the  monies  needed 
for  the  year's  work.  Face  the  issues  of  the  year 
frankly.  Pay  to  the  minister  and  to  other  employees 
of  the  church  a  suflScient  amount  to  provide  them 
with  needful  things  throughout  the  year.  A  living 
wage  is  not  enough.  The  minister  especially  needs 
a  working  salary.  With  little  variation  throughout 
the  country  as  a  whole  the  minister  in  the  rural  com- 
munity should  have  in  order  to  minister  to  his  people, 
to  educate  his  children  and  to  look  forward  without 
fear  to  old  age,  twelve  to  fourteen  hundred  dollars 
a  year  and  a  house.  Many  country  communities 
have  a  more  expensive  standard,  and  there  are  a 
few  in  which  less  is  required.  But  in  Southern 
States  and  in  "Western  communities  I  have  found  the 

[138] 


NEWCOMERS    IN   THE   COMMUNITY 

conditions,  created  by  the  prices  which  prevail 
throughout  the  country  as  a  whole,  at  this  standard. 

When  the  budget  of  the  year  is  prepared,  including 
missionary  and  benevolent  gifts,  it  should  be  dis- 
tributed by  the  oflBcers  through  consultation  with 
all  the  members  of  the  church,  young  and  old,  rich 
and  poor,  in  such  way  as  to  secure  a  gift  from  every 
one  and  to  meet  the  obligations  of  the  church  as  a 
whole.  For  the  moral  values  of  the  situation  the 
small  gift  of  the  poor  and  of  the  child  are  even  more 
important  than  the  large  gift  of  the  well-to-do.  For 
the  securing  of  these  gifts  the  envelope  system,  es- 
pecially the  so-called  duplex  envelope,  is  the  best 
means  which  can  be  generally  used  by  chiu'ches. 
It  is  a  method  flexible  enough  to  reach  every  member 
and  it  represents  in  its  duplex  form  the  double  motive 
of  giving  to  the  community  itself  and  to  those  larger 
national  and  missionary  enterprises  to  which  the 
country  should  contribute. 

The  third  method  of  developing  the  country 
community  is  recreative.  I  mention  it  here  for  com- 
pleteness of  statement.  Another  chapter  is  devoted 
to  recreation  in  the  country  community.  The 
amusements  and  recreations  of  the  country  com- 
munity are  immersed  in  moral  issues.  The  ethical 
life  of  the  community  is  the  atmosphere  in  which 
social  pleasure  is  taken.  Therefore  the  recreations 
of  the  community  are  to  be  provided  and  supervised 
by  those  who  would  undertake  to  create  a  wholesome 
community  life.    A  maximum  of  provision  and  a 

[139] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

minimum  of  supervision  are  required.  Country 
life  is  devoid  of  means  for  recreation.  Some  one 
must  provide  it.  Usually  it  is  either  neglected 
altogether,  and  the  result  is  dullness  and  monotony; 
or  it  is  provided  for  a  price,  and  the  result  is  an 
organized  center  of  immorality.  Recreation  re- 
quires but  little  supervision.  The  presence  of  older 
persons,  and  those  of  a  humane  friendly  spirit,  is 
usually  necessary  to  the  games.  These  are  based 
on  honor  and  with  a  few  simple  principles  the 
young  people  and  working  people  of  the  community 
will  organize  their  own  play  and  find  therein  a  great 
benefit. 

To  summarize  this  chapter,rthe  acute  problem 
in  many  communities  today  is  the  merging  of  the 
life  of  newcomers  in  the  community  into  the  organ- 
ized social  life  which  is  older  and  more  settled. 
This  task  belongs  above  all  to  the  country  church. 
Many  of  the  detailed  applications  are  for  the  school 
to  follow  out,  but  the  business  of  the  church  is  to 
see  and  to  inspire.  If  the  church  is  not  democratic, 
the  community  will  be  hopelessly  divided.  If  the 
church  welcomes  the  newcomer  and  finds  him  a  place, 
the  community  will  be  inspired  with  a  democratic 
spirit.  The  task  of  the  church  is  indicated  in  the 
new  prosperity  of  the  country  which  tends  from  the 
first  to  remove  from  the  community  those  who 
prosper.  The  church's  business  is  to  win  to  the 
community  all  who  come  into  it  and  to  release  from 
its  hold  as  few  as  possibleN 

[U(f] 


NEWCOMERS    IN   THE    COMMUNITY 

In  a  discussion  of  country  life  in  a  Tennessee 
college  town  the  question  was  asked  of  a  professor 
of  agriculture  who  was  speaking  about  farm  tenantry, 
"What  should  the  church  do  for  the  tenant  farmer?" 
"Borrow  money  for  him  and  help  him  to  buy  land," 
said  the  professor. 

Such  a  solution  might  be  the  church's  task,  but 
the  example  of  England's  policy  for  Ireland  shows 
that  the  professor  commended  a  governmental 
rather  than  a  religious  service.  For  it  is  found  that 
the  Irish  farmer — a  tenant  on  land  whereon  his  an- 
cestors have  for  centuries  been  tenants — when  he 
secures  the  land  in  fee  through  the  new  policies  of 
the  British  Government,  frequently  deserts  the  coun- 
try community,  selling  his  land  to  a  neighbor.  Some 
sections  of  Ireland  are  said  to  have  a  new  kind  of  small 
tenantry  and  a  new  sort  of  small  landlord.  The  task 
of  the  country  community  begins  where  the  task 
of  government  leaves  off.  It  is  to  inspire  the  resi- 
dent in  the  country  with  a  vision,  and  to  lay  upon 
him  the  imperative,  of  building  up  the  country  com- 
munity out  of  the  newcomers,  who  enter  it  by  birth 
or  by  migration. 


L1411 


CO-OPERATION 

IN  CONTRAST  to  other  classes  of  the  population 
country  people  have  a  marked  preference  for 
individual  action  and  an  aversion  to  co-operative 
effort.  The  causes  of  this  are  historical.  In  general 
these  causes  are  of  the  past  and  they  are  not  a  matter 
of  persuasion.  The  American  farmer  has  not 
co-operated  in  the  past  because:  first,  the  necessities 
of  his  Hfe  made  him  independent  and  impatient 
of  the  sacrifices  necessary  in  co-operating  with  his 
fellows.  We  have  still  many  influences  of  the  pio- 
neer in  modern  life.  So  long  as  agriculture  is  soli-' 
tary  work  and  its  processes  take  a  man  away  from 
his  fellows,  co-operation  will  be  retarded.  So  long 
as  the  countryman  has  to  practise  a  variety  of  trades, 
he  will  be  emotional,  and  the  social  life  of  the  country 
will  be  broken  up  by  feuds,  divisions,  separations 
and  continued  misunderstandings.  No  mere  edu- 
cation as  to  alleged  right  and  wrong  can  plaster  over 
the  old  economy  with  new  ethical  standards.  Until 
the  loneliness  and  the  emotion  are  taken  out  of 
farming  country  people  cannot  co-operate. 

A  good  part  of  the  United  States  is  still  in  the 
land  farmer  period.    The  characteristic  of  the  land 

[142] 


CO-OPERATION 

farmer  is  his  cultivation  of  group  life.  The  historical 
process  by  which  this  group  life  is  broken  up  is 
exploitation.  Farmers  whose  lands  have  not  been 
exploited  and  whose  group  life  has  not  suffered  the 
undermining  influence  of  exploitation  will  not 
normally  co-operate.  I  am  convinced  that  in  most 
farming  territories  the  loyalty  of  the  countryman  to 
his  group  is  the  second  reason  for  his  refusal  to  co-op- 
erate. Again,  this  refusal  of  his  is  not  subject  to 
persuasion.  He  is  obeying  an  economic  condition 
which  shapes  his  life  and  controls  his  action.  Strik- 
ing instances  are  furnished  in  many  regions  of  the 
amazing  disloyalty  of  farmers  to  one  another,  and  to 
their  own  pledged  word.  These  are  to  be  explained 
by  the  type  to  which  the  farmer  in  these  sections 
conforms.  We  must  not  expect  the  land  farmer  to 
obey  the  ethical  standards  of  the  husbandman. 

A  good  instance  of  this  conformity  to  type  was 
furnished  in  the  case  of  meetings  held  in  Louisiana 
and  Western  Mississippi  among  the  farmers  who  raise 
cotton.  The  occasion  of  the  meetings  was  the  ap- 
proach of  the  boll  weevil  to  their  districts.  The 
attendance  upon  the  meetings  was  large,  indeed 
universal.  The  situation  was  clearly  understood 
and  the  speakers  secured  from  the  farmers  present  a 
promise  quite  unanimous  to  refrain  from  cultivating 
cotton  for  a  year.  The  purpose  of  this  was  to  meet 
the  boll  weevil  with  a  territory  in  which  he  would 
find  no  food.  Thus  his  march  eastward  across  the 
cotton  field  would  be  arrested. 

[143] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

The  farmers  having  made  their  promise  and  agreed 
heartily  in  the  proposal,  adjourned.  Weeks  and 
months  passed  and  the  time  approached  for  plant- 
ing cotton.  Farmer  after  farmer,  who  had  attended 
these  meetings  and  given  his  promise,  privately 
decided  that  he  would  plant  a  cotton  crop  and  se- 
cretly expected  that  he  would  secure  a  larger  price 
that  year  because  so  many  of  his  neighbors  were 
to  raise  other  crops.  When  the  full  season  for 
planting  cotton  had  come  it  was  discovered  that 
so  many  farmers  had  planted  cotton  that  the  plan 
of  co-operation  was  a  failure,  and  the  whole  district 
went  back  to  cotton,  with  full  prospect  of  assisting 
the  boll  weevil  in  his  course  toward  the  East.  The 
reasons  for  this  action  lie  in  the  type  of  farmer  who 
thus  found  it  impossible  to  co-operate.  Each  of 
these  farmers  regarded  above  all  other  things  the 
success  of  his  own  farm  and  his  own  family  group. 
In  contrast  to  this  interest  no  other  claim,  no  ex- 
hortation and  not  even  his  word  given  in  public 
had  any  lasting  influence  upon  his  action. 

The  third  element  in  the  inability  of  country 
people  to  co-operate  is  the  ideal  of  level  democratic 
equality  which  prevails  in  the  country.  Where 
universal  land-ownership  has  been  the  rule  every 
countryman  thinks  himself  "as  good  as  anybody 
else."  So  long  as  this  ideal  prevails,  that  subjection 
of  himself  to  another,  and  the  controlling  of  his 
action  by  the  interests  of  the  community,  are  im- 
possible.    The  farmer  cannot  co-operate  when  he 

[  144  ] 


CO-OPERATION 

thinks  of  social  life  in  terms  of  pure  democracy. 
There  must  be  a  large  sense  of  team  work,  a  loyal 
and  instinctive  obedience  to  leaders,  a  devoted  spirit 
which  looks  for  honest  leadership,  before  there  can 
be  co-operation.  These  things  come  not  by  per- 
suasion, but  by  experience.  Co-operation  is  the  act 
of  a  mature  people.  Not  until  country  people  have 
passed  through  earlier  stages  and  discarded  earlier 
ideals  can  the  preacher  and  the  organizer  and  the 
teacher  successfully  inculcate  a  spirit  of  co-operation. 

Country  churches  are  highly  representative  in 
their  present  divided  condition.  This  multiplica- 
tion of  churches  in  the  country  is  lamentable  chiefly 
because  it  registers  the  divided  state  of  country  life. 
It  is  true  that  divided  churches  are  religiously  in- 
efficient, but  it  is  vastly  more  important  that  divided 
churches  are  embodiments  of  what  one  country 
minister  calls  "the  tuberculosis  of  the  American 
farmer,  individualism." 

It  was  natural  for  the  pioneer  to  desire  a  religion 
in  terms  of  a  message  of  personal  salvation.  Per- 
sonality in  his  lonely  life  was  the  noblest,  indeed 
the  only  form  of  humanity  known  to  him,  therefore 
the  herald  was  his  minister  and  emotion  was  his 
religion.  It  is  very  natural  for  the  land  farmer  to 
organize  religion  in  terms  of  group  life.  His  churches 
were  only  handmaids  of  his  household.  They  had 
but  the  beginnings  of  social  organization.  They 
taught  the  ethics  of  home  life,  of  the  separate  farm 
and  of  a  land-owning  people.  Obviously  the  chiu*ch 
u  [1451 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

for  the  pioneer  and  for  the  land  farmer  could  be  a 
very  weak  and  indifferent  organization,  but  efficient 
for  the  religious  needs  of  those  independent,  self- 
reliant  types  of  countrymen. 

For  these  reasons  in  all  parts  of  the  country  the 
pitiful  story  is  heard  of  divided  communities.  One 
need  not  recite  it  here.  It  usually  is  the  account 
of  three  hundred  or  four  hundred  people  with  five 
or  six  country  churches.  At  its  worst  there  is  a 
small  community  in  which  missionary  agencies  are 
supporting  ministers  who  do  not  average  one  hundred 
possible  families  apiece  in  the  community.  The  con- 
dition of  Center  Hall,  Pennsylvania,  has  been  des- 
cribed in  another  chapter,  in  which  there  are  within 
a  radius  of  four  miles  from  a  given  point  twenty -four 
country  churches.  This  community  represents  a 
condition  of  transition  from  the  land-farmer  type 
to  that  of  exploitation.  Some  of  these  churches 
are  the  old  churches  of  the  land-owning  resident 
farmers,  but  the  most  of  them  are  said  to  be  the  newer 
churches  of  tenants  who  have  come  into  the  com- 
munity. Our  present  concern  is  to  recognize  the 
relation  of  the  divided  churches  to  the  divided  social 
life  of  the  community.  The  criticism  of  the  country 
community  must  be  made  on  an  understanding  of  the 
stage  of  development  to  which  that  community  has 
attained.  Whatever  is  planned  for  the  upbuilding 
of  the  country  community  must  be  planned  in  har- 
mony with  the  well-known  facts  of  rural  development. 

Business  life  introduces  into  the  community  a  new 
[  146  ] 


CO-OPERATION 

standard  of  values.  Cash  and  credit  take  the  place 
of  barter.  The  exchange  in  kind  on  which  originally 
the  community  depended  comes  to  an  end.  Busi- 
ness life  very  shortly  induces  combination.  The 
whole  of  modern  business  presents  a  spectacle  of 
universal  combination  and  co-operation.  The  farmer 
who  is  most  conservative  is  surrounded  on  all  sides 
by  the  aggressive  forces  of  business.  Combined 
in  their  own  interest  they  compete  with  him  on 
unequal  terms.  He  stands  alone  and  they  stand 
combined. 

Americans  are  looking  with  growing  interest  on 
the  experience  of  Denmark  where  a  multitude  of 
co-operative  associations  represent  the  spirit  of  the 
people.  This  spirit  has  been  deliberately  cultivated 
in  the  land  for  forty  years.  It  is  the  universal  testi- 
mony of  observers  that  the  prosperity  of  Denmark 
is  dependent  on  these  co-operative  agencies  and  upon 
this  united  spirit.  The  exodus  from  the  country  has 
been  arrested,  agriculture  has  been  made  a  desirable 
occupation,  profitable  for  the  farmer  and  most  prob- 
able for  the  state,  and  the  people  as  a  whole  have 
taken  front  rank  in  social  and  economic  welfare. 
Essential  to  this  constructive  period  of  Denmark's 
life  is  co-operation.^ 

In  Sir  Horace  Plunkett's  recent  book,  "The  Rural 
Life  Problem  in  The  United  States,"  he  develops 

»"  Rural  Denmark  and  Its  Lessons,"  by  H.  Rider  Haggard.  See 
also  the  Bulletins  of  the  International  Institute  of  Agriculture  at  Rome. 
Italy. 

[147] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

this  principle  clearly.  He  says  that  in  the  organi- 
zation of  country  life  in  Ireland  it  was  necessary  to 
go  into  the  very  heart  of  the  people's  experience 
and  organize  their  economic  and  social  processes  in 
forms  of  co-operation. 

"When  farmers  combine,  it  is  a  combination  not 
of  money  only,  but  of  personal  effort  in  relation  to 
the  entire  business.  In  a  co-operative  creamery 
for  example,  the  chief  contribution  of  a  shareholder 
is  in  milk;  in  a  co-operative  elevator,  corn;  in  other 
cases  it  may  be  fruit  or  vegetables,  or  a  variety  of 
material  things  rather  than  cash.  But  it  is,  most  of 
all,  a  combination  of  neighbors  within  an  area  small 
enough  to  allow  of  all  the  members  meeting  fre- 
quently at  the  business  center.  As  the  system  de- 
velops, the  local  associations  are  federated  for  larger 
business  transactions,  but  these  are  governed  by 
delegates  carefully  chosen  by  the  members  of  the 
constituent  bodies.  The  object  of  such  associations 
is  primarily,  not  to  declare  a  dividend,  but  rather 
to  improve  the  conditions  of  the  industry  for  the 
members. 

"It  is  recognized  that  the  poor  man's  co-operation 
is  as  important  as  the  rich  man's  subscription. 
*One  man,  one  vote,'  is  the  almost  universal  principle 
in  co-operative  bodies. 

"The  distinction  between  the  capitalistic  basis 
of  joint  stock  organization  and  the  more  human 
character  of  the  co-operative  system  is  fundamentally 
important. 

[148] 


CO-OPERATION 

"In  this  matter  I  am  here  speaking  from  practical 
experience  in  Ireland.  Twenty  years  ago  the  pio- 
neers of  our  rural  life  movement  found  it  necessary 
to  concentrate  their  efiForts  upon  the  reorganization 
of  the  farmer's  business. 

"1.  We  began  with  the  dairying  industry,  and 
already  half  the  export  of  Irish  butter  comes  from 
the  co-operative  societies  we  established. 

**2.  Organized  bodies  of  farmers  are  learning  to 
purchase  their  agricultural  requirements  intelli- 
gently and  economically. 

"3.  They  are  also  beginning  to  adopt  the  methods 
of  the  organized  foreign  farmer  in  controlling  the* 
sale  of  their  butter,  eggs  and  poultry  in  the  British 
markets. 

"4.  And  they  not  only  combine  in  agricultural 
production  and  distribution,  but  are  also  making  a 
promising  beginning  in  grappling  with  the  problem 
of  agricultural  finance.  It  is  in  the  last  portion  of 
the  Irish  programme  that  by  far  the  most  interesting 
study  of  the  co-operative  system  can  be  made,  on 
account  of  its  success  in  the  poorest  parts  of  the 
Island.  Furthermore,  the  attempt  to  enable  the 
most  embarrassed  section  of  the  Irish  peasantry  to 
procure  working  capital  illustrates  some  features 
of  agricultural  co-operation  which  will  have  suggestive 
value  for  American  farmers. 

"A  body  of  very  poor  persons,  individually — in 
the  commercial  sense  of  the  term — insolvent,  manage 
to  create  a  new  basis  of  security  which  has  been 

[149] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

somewhat  gradiloquently  and  yet  truthfully  called 
*the  capitalization  of  their  honesty  and  industry.' 
The  way  in  which  this  is  done  is  remarkably  ingen- 
ious. The  credit  society  is  organized  in  the  usual 
democratic  way  explained  above,  but  its  constitution 
is  peculiar  in  one  respect.  The  members  have  to 
become  jointly  and  severally  responsible  for  the  debts 
of  the  association,  which  borrows  on  this  unlimited 
liability  ^  from  the  ordinary  commercial  bank,  or, 
in  some  cases,  from  Government  sources.  After 
the  initial  stage,  when  the  institution  becomes  firmly 
established,  it  attracts  local  deposits,  and  thus  the 
savings  of  the  community,  which  are  too  often 
hoarded,  are  set  free  to  fructify  in  the  community. 
The  procedure  by  which  the  money  borrowed  is  lent 
to  the  members  of  the  association  is  the  essential 
feature  of  the  scheme.  The  member  requiring  the 
loan  must  state  what  he  is  going  to  do  with  the 
money.  He  must  satisfy  the  committee  of  the  asso- 
ciation, who  know  the  man  and  his  business,  that 
the  proposed  investment  is  one  which  will  enable 
him  to  repay  both  principal  and  interest.  He  must 
enter  into  a  bond  with  two  sureties  for  the  repayment 
of  the  loan,  and  needless  to  say  the  characters  of 
both  the  borrower  and  his  sureties  are  very  carefully 
considered.  The  period  for  which  the  loan  is  granted 
is  arranged  to  meet  the  needs  of  the  case,  as  de- 
termined by  the  committee  after  a  full  discussion 
with  the  borrower.  Once  the  loan  has  been  made, 
it  becomes  the  concern  of  every  member  of  the  as- 

[150] 


CO-OPERATION 

sociation  to  see  that  it  is  applied  to  the  *  approved 
purpose' — as  it  is  technically  called.  What  is 
more  important  is  that  all  the  borrower's  fellow-mem- 
bers become  interested  in  his  business  and  anxious 
for  its  success. 

"The  fact  that  nearly  three  hundred  of  these  soci- 
eties are  at  work  in  Ireland  and  that,  although  their 
transactions  are  on  a  very  modest  scale,  the  system 
is  steadily  growing  both  in  the  numbers  of  its  ad- 
herents and  in  the  turnover, — this  fact  is,  I  think, 
a  remarkable  testimony  to  the  value  of  the  co-op- 
erative system.  The  details  I  have  given  illustrate 
one  important  distinction  between  co-operation, 
which  enables  the  farmer  to  do  his  business  in  a  way 
that  suits  him,  and  the  urban  form  of  combination, 
which  is  unsuited  to  his  needs." 

The  traditional  economy  that  centered  in  the  farm 
household  was  independent.  The  ethical  standards 
of  country  life  recognized  but  small  obligations  to 
those  outside  the  household.  Farmers  still  idealize 
an  individual,  or  rather  a  group,  success.  They  en- 
tertain the  hope  that  their  farm  may  raise  some 
specialty  for  which  a  better  price  shall  be  gained  and 
by  which  an  exceptional  advantage  in  the  market 
shall  be  possessed.  The  conditions  of  the  world 
economy  are  imposing  upon  the  farmer  the  necessity 
of  co-operation. 

The  prices  of  all  the  farmers'  products  are  fixed 
by  the  marginal  goods  put  upon  the  market.  For 
instance,  the  standard  milk  for  which  the  price  is 

1151] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

paid  to  dairy  farmers,  is  the  milk  which  can  barely 
secure  a  purchaser.  The  poor  quality,  relative  un- 
cleanness,  and  the  low  grade  of  the  marginal  milk 
dominate  the  general  market  in  every  city,  and  the 
farmer  who  produces  a  better  grade  gets  nothing 
for  the  difference.  It  is  true  that  there  is  a  special 
price  paid  by  hospitals  and  a  limited  market  may  be 
established  by  special  institutions,  but  we  are  dealing 
here  with  general  conditions  such  as  affect  the  aver- 
age milk  farmer  and  the  great  bulk  of  the  farmers. 
It  is  on  these  average  conditions  alone  that  the 
country  community  can  depend. 

Co-operation  is  the  essential  measure  by  which  the 
producer  of  marginal  goods  can  be  influenced.  To 
raise  the  standard  of  his  product  it  is  necessary  to 
have  a  combination  of  producers.  So  long  as  the 
better  farmer  is  dependent  by  economic  law  upon 
those  prices  paid  for  marginal  goods,  the  only  way 
for  the  better  farmer  to  secure  a  better  gain  is  to 
engage  in  co-operation  which  shall  include  the  poorer 
and  the  marginal  farmer. 

In  the  Kentucky  coimties  which  raise  Burley 
tobacco,  a  few  years  ago  the  tenant  farmer  was  an 
economic  slave.  He  sold  his  crop  at  a  price  dictated 
by  a  combination  of  buyers.  He  lived  throughout 
the  year  on  credit.  His  wife  and  his  children  were 
obliged  to  work  in  the  field  in  summer.  He  had 
nothing  for  contribution  to  community  institutions. 
Indeed,  he  very  frequently  ended  the  year  without 
paying  his  debts  for  food  and  clothing. 

1152] 


CO-OPERATION 

The  organizations  of  these  farmers  which  have 
been  formed  in  recent  years  for  self-protection  have 
been  blamed  for  some  outrageous  deeds.  Persons 
in  sympathy  with  these  organizations  have  burned 
the  barns  of  farmers  unwilling  to  enter  the  combina- 
tion. They  have  administered  whippings  and  threats 
right  and  left  in  the  interest  of  the  farmers'  organi- 
zation. In  their  contest  with  the  buyers  to  secure 
a  better  price  they  have  reduced  to  ashes  some  of  the 
warehouses  of  the  monopoly  to  which  they  were 
obliged  to  sell  their  tobacco.  These  public  outrages 
are  worthy  of  condemnation.  The  writer  believes 
that  they  were  not  essential  to  the  process  of  co-oper- 
ation by  which  the  farmers  fought  their  way  to  better 
success,  though  the  efiFect  of  these  acts  is  a  part  of 
the  historical  process. 

But  the  combination  of  farmers  has  redeemed  the 
poorer,  the  tenant  farmer  and  the  small  farmer  from 
economic  slavery.  His  representatives  now  fix  the 
price  of  the  product.  There  is  one  buyer  and  one 
seller,  competition  being  eliminated;  and  the  price 
at  which  the  tobacco  is  sold  is  the  farmers'  price, 
not  the  manufacturer's  price.  As  a  result  the  farmers 
are  able  to  hire  help.  The  wife  and  children  no 
longer  work  in  the  field.  The  bills  are  paid  as  they 
are  incurred,  instead  of  credit  slavery  binding  the 
farmer  from  year  to  year.  Last  of  all  this  prosperity 
has  taken  form  in  better  roads,  better  schools  and 
better  churches.  It  remains  only  to  be  said  that 
among  the  farmers   engaging  in   this  co-operative 

[153] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

union  there  were  many  preachers  and  pastors  of  the 
region.  They  took  a  large  part  in  the  combinations 
of  farmers  which  affected  this  great  gain.  They 
recognized  that  the  fight  of  the  farmers  for  self- 
respect  and  for  free  existence  was  a  religious  struggle 
and  that  the  church  had  a  common  interest  in  the 
well  being  of  the  population  to  which  it  ministered. 

Another  instance  of  co-operation  is  seen  in  Delaware 
and  on  the  "Eastern  Shore"  where  the  soil  had  been 
exhausted.  Methods  of  slavery  days  were  unfavor- 
able to  the  land  and  after  the  War  it  was  long  neg- 
lected. In  recent  years  a  new  type  of  farmer  has 
come  into  this  territory.  By  intensive  cultivation 
with  scientific  methods,  he  is  raising  small  fruits, 
berries,  vegetables  and  other  products,  for  the  nearby 
markets  in  the  great  cities.  The  success  of  these 
farmers  has  been  dependent  upon  their  produce 
exchanges.  They  have  learned,  contrary  to  the 
traditional  belief  of  farmers,  that  there  is  a  greater 
profit  for  the  individual  farmer  in  raising  the  same 
crop  as  his  neighbor,  than  there  is  in  an  especial 
crop  which  competes  in  the  market  for  itself.  That 
is  to  say,  in  shipping  a  carload  of  strawberries  the 
farmer  gets  a  better  price  when  the  car  is  filled  with 
one  kind  of  berry  than  he  would  receive  if  the  car 
was  made  up  of  a  number  of  separate  consignments 
under  different  names  and  of  different  varieties. 
Co-operation  has  been  better  for  the  individual  than 
competition. 

It  at  once  becomes  evident  that  co-operation  is  an 
1154] 


CO-OPERATION 

ethical  and  a  religious  discipline.  As  soon  as  the 
farming  population  is  saturated  with  the  idea,  which 
these  farmers  fully  understand  who  have  prospered 
by  co-operation,  the  religious  message  in  these  terri- 
tories will  be  a  new  message  of  brotherhood.  The 
old  gospel  of  an  individual  salvation  apart  from  men 
and  often  at  the  expense  of  other  men  will  be  enlarged 
and  renewed  into  a  gospel  of  social  salvation.  No 
man  will  be  saved  to  a  Heaven  apart  or  to  a  salva- 
tion which  he  attains  by  competition  or  by  compari- 
son, but  men  shall  be  saved  through  their  fellows  and 
with  their  fellows.  The  country  church,  of  all  our 
churches,  will  teach  in  the  days  to  come  the  gospel  of 
unity. 

The  writer's  own  exj>erience  as  a  country  minister 
was  a  perfect  illustration  of  this  union  of  all  members 
of  a  community.  In  the  community  Quakers,  Irish 
Catholics,  Episcopalians,  Presbyterians  and  Baptists 
were  represented  in  nearly  equal  numbers.  With 
people  widely  diverse  in  their  economic  position, 
though  dependent  upon  one  another,  it  became  evi- 
dent to  all  that  the  only  religious  experience  of  the 
community  must  be  an  experience  of  unity.  Under 
the  leadership  of  an  old  Quaker  who  supplied  the 
funds  and  of  two  others  of  gracious  spirit  and  broad 
intellect,  the  whole  community  was  united,  on  the 
condition  that  all  should  share  in  that  which  any  did. 
One  church  was  organized  to  receive  all  the  adherents 
of  Protestant  faith  and  one  service  of  worship  united 
all,  whether  within  or  without  the  church.     Even 

[1551 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

the  Roman  Catholics  once  or  twice  a  year  for  twenty 
years  have  been  brought  together  in  meetings  which 
express  the  unity  of  the  countryside. 

Other  instances  there  are  of  co-operation  among 
churches  in  the  country,  but  their  number  is  not 
great.  There  is  a  supplementary  co-operation  in  the 
division  of  territory  in  some  states.  The  church  at 
Hanover,  N.  J.,  has  a  territory  six  miles  by  four,  in 
which  no  other  church  has  been  established.  This 
old  Presbyterian  congregation  has  peopled  its  coun- 
tryside with  its  chapels  and  has  assembled  the  chapel 
worshippers  regularly  at  its  services  in  the  old  church 
at  the  graveyard  and  the  manse. 

In  Rock  Creek,  Illinois,  the  Presbyterian  Church 
has  a  community  to  itself,  and  ministers  in  its  terri- 
tory with  the  same  efficiency  with  which  the  Baptist 
church  across  the  creek  ministers  to  its  territory, 
in  which  it  also  has  a  religious  monopoly.  These 
two  congregations  respect  one  another  and  have  a 
sense  of  supplementing  one  another,  which  is  a  form 
of  co-operation.  The  ideal  expressed  in  these  two 
instances  is  cherished  by  many.  It  is  hoped  that 
religious  bodies  may  agree  in  time  to  divide  the 
territory,  to  give  up  churches,  to  sell  or  transfer  prop- 
erty rights  and  to  shift  their  ministers  from  com- 
munities which  have  too  many  to  those  communities 
not  served  at  all.  But  the  way  for  this  co-operation 
as  an  active  principle  has  not  yet  opened.  Its 
value  is  in  those  communities  which  have  had  it  from 

[1561 


CO-OPERATION 

the  first  as  an  inheritance.  It  has  so  far  not  proven 
a  remedy  to  be  applied  for  the  cure  of  existing  evils. 
The  writer  believes  that  the  path  of  co-operation 
is  the  efficient  and  slow  one  of  economic  and  social 
organization  rather  than  the  delusive  short-cut  of 
religious  union.  People  cannot  be  united  in  religion 
until  they  are  united  in  their  social  economy.  The 
business  of  the  church  is  to  organize  co-op>erative 
enterprises,  economic,  social  and  educational,  and 
to  school  the  people  in  the  joy,  to  educate  them  in 
the  advantages,  of  life  together.  Co-operation  must 
become  a  gospel.  Union  requires  to  be  a  religious 
doctrine.  It  will  be  well  for  a  long  time  to  come  to 
say  but  little  about  organic  union  of  churches  and 
to  say  a  great  deal  about  the  union  in  the  life  of  the 
people  themselves. 


11571 


XI 

C(!>^n(Lm  SCHOOLS 

THE  weakness  of  the  common  schools  in  Ameri- 
can rural  communities  shows  itself  in  their 
failure  to  educate  the  marginal  people  of  the 
community,  in  their  failure  to  train  average  men  and 
women  for  life  in  that  community,  in  their  robbing 
the  community  of  leadership  by  training  those  on 
(/  whom  their  influence  is  strongest,  so  that  they  go 
out  from  the  community  never  to  return;  and  in 
their  general  disloyalty  to  the  local  community  with 
its  needs  and  its  problems. 

It  is  the  boast  of  the  people  of  the  country  school 
district  that  their  school  has  "sent  out"  so  many 
people  of  distinction.  On  a  rocky  hillside  in  a  New 
England  town  there  stands,  between  a  wooded  slope 
and  a  swamp,  an  unpainted  school  building.  Within 
and  without  it  is  more  forbidding  than  the  average 
stable  in  that  farming  region.  But  the  resident  of 
that  neighborhood  boasts  of  the  number  of  distin- 
guished persons  who  have  gone  forth  from  the  com- 
munity, under  the  influence  of  that  school.  This 
is  characteristic  of  country  places  and  country  schools. 
The  influence  of  the  school,  so  far  as  it  has  any,  is 
that  of  disloyalty  to  the  neighborhood.     It  robs  the 

[158] 


C<>i^lil(PN   SCHOOLS 

neighborhood  of  leadership.  It  does  nothing  to 
cultivate  a  spirit  of  sympathy  with  the  life  that  must 
be  lived  there.  For  every  one  whom  it  starts  up>on 
the  exodus  to  other  places  it  leaves  two  at  home  un- 
inspired, indifferent  and  mentally  degenerate. 

Another  fault  of  the  one-room  country  school, 
which  makes  it  a  weak  support  of  the  country  com- 
munity, is  its  lack  of  professional  support.  Among 
four  hundred  teachers  in  such  schools,  throughout 
the  country,  not  one  in  a  hundred  expects  to  remain 
as  a  country  schoolteacher  for  a  lifetime.  There  is 
no  professional  class  devoted  to  the  country  school. 
Its  service  is  incidental  in  the  lives  of  men  devoted 
to  something  else.     It  is  a  mere  side  issue. 

Besides,  its  building  is  inadequate.  Too  many 
needs,  impossible  to  satisfy,  are  assembled  in  a  single 
room.  Too  many  grades  must  be  taught  there  for 
any  one  child  to  receive  the  intense  impression 
necessary  for  his  education. 

The  third  great  fault  of  the  country  school  is  its 
total  lack  of  intelligent  understanding  of  the  coun- 
try. Its  teaching  is  suited  to  prepare  men  for  trade, 
but  not  for  agriculture.  Instead  of  making  farmers 
of  the  sons  of  farmers,  the  majority  of  whom  should 
expect  to  follow  the  profession  of  their  fathers,  the 
country  school  prepares  them  for  buying  and  selling, 
for  calculation  and  for  store  keeping.  It  starts  the 
stream  of  country  boys  in  the  direction  of  the  village 
store,  the  end  of  which  is  the  department  store  or 
clerical  occupation  in  a  great  city. 

[159] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

The  improvement  of  the  one-room  rural  school  is 
possible  within  narrow  limits  only.  A  recent  book  ^ 
gives  most  sympathetic  attention  to  this  problem  of 
improvement,  while  asserting  that  reorganization 
alone  will  be  adequate  to  the  situation.  But  there 
are  improvements  which,  within  the  limitations  of 
the  one-room  school,  are  possible.  The  supervision 
of  these  schools  may  be  made  closer  and  more  efficient. 
By  bringing  to  bear  upon  them  the  oversight  of 
experts  in  education  the  grade  of  teaching  may  be 
elevated.  The  important  principle  is  to  discover 
the  proper  unit  of  supervision.  The  town  is  too 
small  and  the  county  unit  too  large.  It  is  probable 
that  with  some  rearrangement  the  county  can  be 
made  the  proper  unit  of  supervision,  but  the  school 
should  determine  its  problems  on  a  principle  inde- 
pendent of  political  divisions.  The  first  need  of 
the  country  school  at  the  present  time  is  to  be 
adapted,  by  such  supervision  of  the  district  as  shall 
correlate  the  country  school  with  the  units  of  popu- 
lation resident  in  the  country.  In  some  places  the 
district  to  be  supervised  by  one  superintendent 
should  be  not  much  larger  than  a  township,  in  other 
places  it  might  approach  the  bounds  of  a  county, 
but  in  all  instances  the  supervising  officer  should 
have  the  relation  of  an  employed  expert  to  the  prob- 
lems of  the  country.  It  is  not  enough  that  untrained 
farmers  or  tradesmen  occasionally  visit  the  school 
in   an  indifferent   manner.     Their    indifference    is 

I  "The  American  Rural  School,"  H.  W.  Foght. 
[1601 


COMMON   SCHOOLS 

the  natural  attitude  of  men  untrained  in  the  task 
assigned  to  them.  The  oflScer  who  supervises  should 
be  well  adapted  to  his  task  and  should  visit  with 
frequency,  criticize  with  trained  intelligence,  and 
train  his  teachers  in  a  constructive  educational 
policy  suitable  to  the  district. 

Another  improvement  in  rural  schools  may  be 
had  in  a  better  normal  training  of  the  teachers. 
At  the  present  time  the  normal  schools  are  inade- 
quate to  the  task  of  supplying  teachers  and  beyond 
the  supplying  of  teachers  for  the  city,  they  stop 
short.  The  training  of  teachers  for  country  schools 
must  become  a  part  of  the  normal  provision  for  the 
states. 

The  minimum  salary  for  teachers  is  a  most  im- 
portant consideration.  A  primary  difficulty  in  the 
present  situation  is  that  the  country  school  teacher 
is  ill  paid.  It  is  therefore  impossible  to  secure  and 
to  retain  in  the  country  persons  of  adequate  mental 
and  cultural  value.  In  order  to  secure  funds  for 
better  payment  of  teachers,  a  readjustment  of  the 
taxation  in  the  various  states  is  probably  necessary, 
but  this  will  be  slow  of  accomplishment.  Some 
results  may  be  eflfected  in  another  way  by  a  minimum 
salary  for  teachers  throughout  the  State.  In  this 
manner  a  better  grade  of  teachers  can  be  secured  for 
all  schools. 

The  most  important  improvement,  however,  in 
the  country  schools  is  almost  impossible  in  the  one- 
room  school.  It  is  the  teaching  of  the  gospel  of  the 
la  [161] 


EVOLUTION   OF  THE   COMMUNITY 

land.  Out  around  the  country  school  lies  the  open 
book  of  nature.  First  of  books  the  pupils  should 
learn  to  read  the  book  of  nature.  The  life  of  the 
birds  and  animals,  so  familiar  to  the  children  yet  so 
little  known;  the  growth  of  plants,  their  beauty  and 
their  use,  and  the  nature,  the  tillage  and  the  mainte- 
nance of  the  soil,  are  all  lessons  easy  to  impart  to 
those  who  are  themselves  instructed,  yet  the  present 
system  of  shifting  teachers  makes  such  instruction 
impossible.  It  is  the  opinion  of  expert  educators 
that  the  study  of  agriculture  is  impossible  in  the  one- 
room  country  school.  With  this  opinion  the  writer 
agrees,  yet  so  great  is  the  necessity  of  this  very  im- 
provement and  so  slow  will  be  the  changes  which  look 
to  consolidation  of  schools,  that  effort  should  be 
made  at  once  by  those  in  charge  of  the  country 
school  to  teach  the  children  the  lesson  of  the  soil, 
of  plant  life,  of  animal  and  bird  life  and  of  the  world 
about  them.  These  lessons  are  necessary  to  their 
economic  success.  They  are  the  very  beginning  of 
their  happiness  in  the  country  and  of  love  for  the 
country.  In  teaching  them  the  country  school  can 
best  perform  its  duty  to  the  present  generation. 

The  centralizing  of  country  schools  is  the  adequate 
solution  of  the  present  situation.  By  this  means 
the  children  from  a  wide  area  are  brought  to  a  modem 
school  building  suitably  placed  in  the  country. 
When  necessary  they  are  transported  to  and  from 
the  schools  in  wagons  hired  for  that  purpose,  in 
charge    of   reliable   drivers.     In    this   consolidated 

[162] 


COMMON   SCHOOLS 

school  building,  which  has  taken  the  place  of  three, 
five  or  even  seven  one-room  district  schools  now 
abandoned,  there  shall  be  at  least  two  and  it  may 
be  five  teachers.  This  group  of  teachers  forms  a 
permanent  nucleus  and  a  center  for  the  life  of  the 
country.  The  children  are  assembled  in  a  suflScient 
number  to  provide  a  large  group,  and  their  social 
life  is  enjoyable  as  well  as  mentally  stimulating. 
The  weaknesses  of  the  one-room  district  school  are 
in  this  institution  corrected.  There  is  permanence 
in  the  teaching  force,  professional  service,  cumulative 
influence,  and  the  interests  of  the  community  find 
in  the  school  a  loyal  center  of  discussion.  The  con- 
solidated rural  school  is  an  institution  for  the  first 
time  adequate  to  the  task  of  building  up  the  whole 
population. 

The  first  use  to  which  the  centralized  rural  school 
is  adapted  is  to  halt  the  exodus  from  the  country. 
The  country  community  has  now  no  check  upon  the 
departure  of  its  best  people.  The  sifting  of  the 
country  community  is  done,  not  by  the  community 
itself,  but  by  outside  forces,  unfriendly  and  unintelli- 
gent as  to  the  interests  of  the  coimtry.  The  central- 
ized rural  school  will  retain  in  the  country  those 
who  should  be  interested  in  the  country  community. 
This  will  be  accomplished  by  the  study  of  agriculture, 
which  can  adequately  be  taught  only  in  a  graded 
school  in  the  country.  But  much  can  be  done  even 
by  the  supply  of  an  adequate  system  of  education 
in  the  country  community. 

[16S1 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

At  Rock  Creek,  Illinois,  the  retirement  of  farmers 
to  the  cities  and  towns  had  gone  so  far  in  1905  that 
the  intelligent  and  devoted  members  of  the  com- 
munity, who  did  not  desire  to  leave  the  place  where 
their  grandfathers  had  first  broken  the  prairie  sod, 
took  counsel  as  to  the  welfare  of  the  community. 
The  superficial  fact  of  most  consequence  was  the 
presence  of  tenant  farmers  in  the  community. 
These  tenants,  however  desirable  personally  as 
neighbors,  were  of  a  short  term  of  residence.  From 
one  to  five  years  was  their  longest  term  on  one  farm. 
The  social  life  of  the  community  and  its  religious 
interests  were  beginning  to  suffer.  The  sons  of  the 
early  settlers,  therefore,  laid  their  plans  by  which 
to  control  the  selection  of  tenants. 

Their  first  plan  was  to  form  a  farmer's  union  or 
syndicate,  which  should  undertake  to  run  the  farms 
of  those  who  were  retiring  from  the  land.  This 
plan  seemed  promising  and  the  makers  of  it  congratu- 
lated themselves  upon  controlling  the  future  of  the 
community.  But  reflection  showed  that  this  method 
would  have  the  effect  of  retiring  more  farmers  from 
the  land  and  turning  over  the  hiring  of  tenants  to 
the  few  remaining  loyal  owners,  who  would  come 
in  a  short  time  to  constitute  the  local  real  estate 
agencies;  while  the  majority  of  the  owners  would 
enjoy  themselves  in  towns  and  villages  round  about. 

The  result  was  that  the  farmers  undertook  not 
to  control  the  tenancy,  but  to  build  up  the  com- 
munity   itself.    They    deliberately    undertook   the 

[164] 


COMMON   SCHOOLS 

reconstruction  of  the  schools.  Three  school  districts 
were  merged  in  one.  An  adequate  building  in  which 
a  group  of  teachers  is  employed  was  erected.  The 
children  are  transported  in  wagons  hired  for  that 
purpose.  The  grounds  about  the  school  building 
are  made  pleasant;  and  the  school,  located  near  the 
manse  and  the  church  which  had  most  influenced 
the  change,  forms  now  a  strong  community  center 
for  a  wide  region. 

The  result  is  all  that  could  be  desired.  The  re- 
tirement from  the  farms  has  been  checked;  the  neigh- 
borhood has  become  specially  desirable  for  residence. 
Farmers  who  had  gone  to  the  town  find  now  that  as 
good  or  better  schools  are  to  be  had  in  the  community 
where  their  property  lies  and  where  they  pay  their 
taxes.  The  rental  price  of  land  has  increased  and 
it  is  difficult  for  tenants  to  come  into  the  community 
unless  they  are  willing  to  pay  an  added  rental  in 
return  for  better  school  privileges.  The  whole 
countryside  has  received  an  impetus  and  the  depres- 
sion of  country  life  has  for  this  community  departed. 
Mr.  R.  E.  Bone,  "the  fourth  red-headed  Presby- 
terian elder  Bone  in  the  Rock  Creek  Church,"  takes 
great  pride  in  the  building  up  of  the  community 
which  has  been  effected  through  the  consolidated 
school. 

A  more  mature  example  is  the  John  Swaney  Con- 
solidated School  in  Illinois.  Here  the  leadership 
and  generosity  of  John  Swaney,  a  member  of  the 
Society  of  Friends,  have  effected  the  consolidation 

[165] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

of  four  school  districts  at  a  point  two  miles  from  the 
village  of  McNab.  This  pm*ely  rural  consolidation 
was  not  effected  without  a  contest.  Indeed  the 
McNab  school  has  had  to  fight  for  the  gains  it  has 
made  from  the  very  beginning.  The  school-house 
stands  by  the  roadside,  not  even  surrounded  by  a 
group  of  residences.  The  grounds  are  peculiarly 
beautiful,  being  shaded  by  great  trees  and  extending 
in  ample  lawn  about  the  building.  In  the  rear  are 
stables  for  the  horses  which  transport  the  children 
daily  from  the  outer  bounds  of  the  consolidated 
district. 

The  school  building  contains  four  class-rooms  with 
physical  and  chemical  laboratories.  In  one  room 
are  apparatus  for  cooking  and  sewing.  In  the  base- 
ment is  a  well-lighted  shop  where  benches  for  manual 
training  are  placed  at  the  use  of  the  boys.  In  the 
third  story  is  an  auditorium  so  ample  as  to  accommo- 
date a  basket-ball  game  and  about  two  hundred 
spectators.  Frequent  gatherings  occur  here  in  a 
simple  spontaneous  way.  This  common  school  has 
all  the  social  and  intellectual  power  of  the  old- 
fashioned  country  academy  which  once  was  so  useful 
in  the  Eastern  States.  A  principal  and  four  women 
teachers  form  the  faculty  of  the  John  Swaney  school. 
The  number  of  scholars  in  1910  was  one  hundred  and 
five,  the  number  of  boys  slightly  exceeding  that  of 
girls.  Of  these  about  half  were  in  the  primary  and 
the  grammar  grades  and  about  half  in  the  high  school. 
Of  the  latter  some  twenty-five  were  tuition  pupils 

[166] 


COMMON   SCHOOLS 

from  outside  of  the  district,  so  that  the  actual  school 
group  of  the  McNab  consolidated  school,  the  children 
of  the  tax-payers,  was  in  that  year  eighty  in  number. 

The  difference  between  the  social  life  of  eighty 
young  people  and  eight  or  eighteen  young  people, 
which  one  may  find  in  a  one-room  school  in  the 
country  anywhere,  is  very  great.  Needless  to  say 
that  the  John  Swaney  school  has  athletic  teams, 
tennis  tournament,  baseball  games,  literary 
and  debating  contests  and  is  a  strong  aggressive 
force  lending  life  and  vitality  to  the  whole  country- 
side. The  older  families  of  the  neighborhood  are 
Quakers.  The  newer  half  of  the  population  is  of 
Germanic  stock.  The  influence  of  the  school  is 
upon  all  its  pupils.  The  high  school  retains  prac- 
tically all  the  sons  of  the  Quaker  families  and  some 
of  the  newer  population  whose  interest  in  education 
is  less. 

But  the  crowning  distinction  of  the  John  Swaney 
school  is  in  its  study  of  agriculture,  or  broadly  speak- 
ing in  its  industrial  training.  For  with  agriculture 
must  be  classed  manual  training  and  domestic  science. 
By  John  Swaney's  generosity  twenty  acres  of  land 
were  presented  to  the  State  for  an  experiment  farm. 
This  land  adjoins  the  school  grounds  and  a  regular 
part  of  the  curriculum  for  the  young  men  is  the  study 
of  agriculture.  The  result  of  this  interpretation 
of  country  life  in  forms  of  scholarship  is  that  substan- 
tially all  the  graduates  of  the  high  school  annually 
go  to  the  State  University  for  training  in  scientific 

[167] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

agriculture,  expecting  to  return  to  the  farms  and 
become  rural  residents  of  Illinois.  At  the  present 
time  no  more  profitable  training  could  be  given  these 
young  men  and  women.  But  aside  from  this  eco- 
nomic consideration,  the  social  and  moral  value  to  the 
community  in  the  return  of  these  young  men  and 
women  to  their  own  soil  and  the  scenes  of  their 
childhood  is  beyond  estimation.  The  Quaker  Meet- 
ing in  this  community  is  not  "laid  down;"  the  church 
is  not  abandoned.  Indeed  all  the  activities  of  the 
community  are  built  up  and  the  best  of  the  com- 
munity perpetuated  through  the  medium  of  this 
modern  consolidated  school. 

To  sum  up  this  chapter,  the  improvement  of  the 
one-room  common  schools  is  possible,  but  for  the 
satisfaction  of  the  needs  of  the  modern  country 
community  that  improvement  is  inadequate.  The 
one-room  country  school  is  an  institution  which 
in  itself  cannot  be  made  to  minister  to  modern  com- 
munity life.  It  is  simple  and  modern  life  is  complete. 
It  is  casual  and  irregular  while  the  forces  with  which 
it  has  to  deal  are  steady-going  and  cumulative 
in  their  power.  It  is  inexpert  and  served  by  no 
specialized  professional  class,  while  modern  life  calls 
for  the  service  of  experts  in  every  direction.  It 
has  no  social  value,  while  modern  life  is  always  social 
in  its  forms  of  action  and  requires  social  interpre- 
tation for  its  best  effects. 

A  closing  word  should  be  said  for  a  type  of  schools 
which  has  been  perfected  in  Denmark.     They  are 

[168] 


COMMON   SCHOOLS 

known  as  the  "Folk  High  Schools."  These  are 
popular  schools,  adapted  to  the  teaching  of  adults 
to  get  a  living.  Denmark  has  an  adequate  supply 
of  technical  schools,  and  these  latter  are  not  estab- 
lished to  train  scholars  or  scientists.  Their  use 
is  to  fit  men  and  women  to  meet  the  issues  of  life, 
at  home,  hand  in  hand,  with  skill  and  enthusiasm. 
They  use  few  text-books  and  have  no  examinations, 
and  six  months  are  sufficient  for  a  course  of  study. 
The  schools  are  religious  and  their  foundation  was 
the  work  of  Rev.  N.  F.  S.  Grundtvig.  In  songs  and 
in  patriotic  exercises,  all  their  own,  they  idealize 
country  life  and  the  work  of  the  mechanic. 

The  academies  of  earlier  days  in  rural  America 
were  centers  of  a  similar  influence.  But  with  the 
growth  of  the  public-school  system  these  have  been 
generally  abandoned.  It  is  a  question  whether 
some  of  them  would  not  serve  a  need  which  is  felt 
today,  if  only  they  would  train  men  for  modern 
country  life  wath  the  same  success  which  they  once 
had  in  training  leaders  for  a  former  period. 

Then  all  the  people  lived  in  the  country.  Now 
only  a  third  of  the  people  are  concerned  with  the 
farm.  So  that  the  education  of  the  modern  country 
boy  or  girl  would  require  to  be  carried  on  in  a  difiPer- 
ent  manner,  in  order  to  retain  the  best  of  them  in 
the  country.  The  example  of  the  "Folk  Schools" 
offers  an  analogy  to  what  might  be  done  in  Ameri- 
can country  life,  if  the  academy  could  be  transformed 

[1691 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

into  an  institution  for  the  education  of  the  young 
in  the  country. 

All  observers  testify  that  the  "Folk  High  Schools" 
have  been  the  first  influence  in  transforming  Den- 
mark in  the  past  forty  years,  from  a  nation  economi- 
cally inferior  to  a  nation  rich  and  prosperous.  This 
change  has  been  wrought  through  the  betterment  of 
the  farmers  and  other  country  people,  by  means  of 
education  in  country  life;  and  this  education  has 
been  economic,  patriotic,  co-operative  and  religious. 
So  perfect  has  it  been  that  it  is  hard  to  analyze; 
but  the  acknowledged  center  of  it  has  been  a  system 
of  schools  in  which  the  problem  of  living  is  taught 
as  a  religion,  an  enthusiasm  and  a  culture. 


[170] 


xn 

RURAL  MORALITY 

THE  moral  standards  of  the  pioneer  type  and^ 
of  the  land-farmer  type  prevail  in  the  coun- 
try. The  world  economy  has  precipitated 
on  the  farm  an  era  of  exploitation  which  has  not  yet 
reached  its  highest  point.  Meantime,  according  to 
the  ethical  ideals  of  the  pioneer  and  of  the  farmer, 
country  people  are  moral. 

The  investigations  of  the  Country  Life  Commission 
brought  general  testimony  to  the  high  standards  of 
personal  life  which  prevail  in  the  country.  Li  such 
a  representative  state  as  Pennsylvania  the  standard 
of  conduct  between  the  sexes  was  found  to  be  good. 
The  testimony  of  physicians,  among  the  best  of 
rural  observers,  was  nearly  unanimous,  in  Pennsyl- 
vania, to  the  good  moral  conditions  prevailing  in  the 
intercourse  of  men  and  women  in  the  country.  This 
indicates  that  the  farmer  economy  had  superseded 
the  economy  of  the  pioneer. 

The  moral  problem  of  the  pioneer  jjeriod  consisted 
of  a  struggle  for  honesty  in  business  contracts,  and 
purity  in  the  relation  of  men  and  women.  The 
story  of  every  church  in  New  England  and  Pennsyl- 
vania, until  about  1835  at  which  Professor  Ross 

[1711 


EVOLUTION   OF  THE   COMMUNITY 

dates  the  beginning  of  the  farmer  period,  shows  the 
bitter  struggle  between  the  standard  accepted  by 
the  church  and  that  of  the  individuals  who  failed 
to  conform.  The  standard  was  inherited  from  the 
older  communities  of  Europe.  The  conduct  of  in- 
dividuals grew  out  of  the  pioneer  economy  in  which 
they  were  living.  Church  records  in  New  England 
and  New  York  State  are  red  with  the  story  of  broken 
contracts,  debt  and  adultery.  The  writer  has  care- 
fully studied  the  records  of  Oblong  Meeting  of  the 
Society  of  Friends  in  Duchess  County,  New  York, 
and  from  a  close  knowledge  of  the  community  through 
almost  twenty  years  of  residence  in  it,  it  is  his  belief 
that  there  were  more  cases  of  adultery  considered  by 
Oblong  Meeting  in  every  average  year  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  than  were  known  to  the  whole  com- 
munity in  any  ten  years  at  the  close  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  The  farmer  economy  in  which  the  group 
life  of  the  household  prevailed  over  the  individual 
life  had  by  the  nineteenth  century  superseded  the 
pioneer  period,  in  which  individual  action  and  inde- 
pendent personal  initiative  were  the  prevailing  mode. 
The  coming  of  the  exploiter  into  the  farm  com- 
munity brings  a  new  set  of  ethical  obligations  con- 
cerning property  and  contracts.  The  farmer  has 
perfected  the  individual  standards  of  the  pioneer 
but  he  is  not  yet  endowed  with  social  standards. 
He  knows  that  it  is  right  to  give  full  measure  when 
he  sells  a  commodity,  but  he  does  not  yet  see  the 
evil   of   breaches   of   contract.      Farmers   of   high 

[172] 


RURAL   MORALITY 

standing  in  their  communities  for  their  personal 
character,  who  are  truthful  and  "honest"  in  such 
contractual  relations  as  come  down  from  their  fathers, 
have  been  known  to  use  the  school  system  of  the 
town  for  their  own  private  profit,  or  that  of  members 
of  their  families,  and  to  ignore  financial  obligations 
which  belong  to  the  new  p)eriod,  in  which  money 
values  have  taken  the  place  of  barter  values. 

A  good  illustration  is  that  of  a  deacon  in  a  country 
church,  whom  I  once  knew.  His  word  was  proverb- 
ially truthful.  As  widely  as  he  was  known  his  repu- 
tation for  piety  and  simple  truthfulness,  for  honesty 
and  purity  of  life  were  universal.  I  do  not  think 
that  he  was  consciously  insincere,  but  as  a  trustee  in 
administering  a  fund  devoted  to  public  uses  he 
seemed  to  have  a  clear  eye  for  only  those  enterprises 
through  which  he  or  members  of  his  family  could  in- 
directly secure  incomes.  Entrusted  with  a  public 
service  which  involved  the  improvement  of  the  school 
system,  so  far  as  he  acted  individually  and  without 
prompting  by  those  who  had  been  accustomed  all 
their  lives  to  modern  methods,  his  action  was  that  of 
loyalty  to  his  own  family  and  relationship.  In 
so  doing  he  regularly  would  betray  the  community 
and  the  public  interest.  Yet  he  seemed  to  do  this 
ingenuously  and  without  any  conception  of  the  moral 
standards  of  people  used  to  the  values  of  money. 

I  have  known  the  same  man,  whose  standing  among 
farmers  was  that  of  a  blameless  religious  man,  to 
borrow  money,  and  in  the  period  of  the  loan  so  to 

[17S] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

conduct  himself  as  to  forfeit  the  respect  of  people 
used  to  handling  money.  To  them  he  seemed  to 
be  a  conscious  and  deliberate  grafter.  The  explan- 
ation in  my  mind  is  that  he  suffered  from  the  transi- 
tion out  of  the  pioneer  and  farmer  economy  into  the 
economy  of  the  exploiter. 

The  history  of  the  sale  of  lands. in  the  country, 
in  the  recent  exploitation  of  farm-lands,  contains 
many  stories  of  the  breach  of  contract  of  farmers, 
and  the  inability  of  the  farmer  to  sell  wisely  and  at 
the  same  time  honestly.  Contrasting  the  farmer  in 
his  knowledge  of  financial  obligation  with  the  broker 
in  the  Stock  Exchange,  the  latter  type  stands  out 
in  strong  contrast  as  an  admirable  example  of  finan- 
cial honesty  to  contracts,  even  if  they  be  verbal 
only.  The  farmer  on  the  other  hand  has  no  concep- 
tion of  the  relations  on  which  the  financial  system 
must  be  built.  He  is  not  an  exploiter  to  begin  with, 
but  a  farmer. 

The  transition  from  the  older  economy  to  the  new 
is  illustrated  in  the  dairy  industry  which  surrounds 
every  great  city.  The  dairy  farmer  has  ideas  of 
right  and  wrong  which  are  purely  individualistic. 
He  believes  that  he  should  not  cheat  the  customer 
in  the  quantity  of  milk.  He  recognizes  that  it 
is  wrong,  therefore,  to  water  the  milk,  but  he  has  no 
conception  of  social  morality  concerning  milk. 
He  gives  full  measure:  but  he  cares  nothing  about 
purity  of  milk.  He  is  restless  and  feels  himself 
oppressed  under  the  demands  of  the  inspector  from 

[1741 


RURAL   MORALITY 

the  city,  for  ventilation  of  his  bams  and  for  protection 
of  the  milk  from  impurity.  I  have  known  few  milk 
farmers  who  believed  in  giving  pure  milk  and  I 
never  knew  one  whose  conscience  was  at  ease  in 
watering  milk.  That  is,  they  all  believe  in  good 
measure  and  none  believes  in  the  principle  of  sani- 
tation. They  stand  at  the  transition  from  the  old 
economy  to  the  new. 

A  story  is  told  among  agricultural  teachers  in 
New  York  State  to  the  effect  that  an  inspector  follow- 
ing the  trail  of  disease  in  a  small  city  traced  it  to  im- 
pure milk  supplied  by  a  certain  farm.  In  the  ab- 
sence of  the  man  he  insisted  on  inspecting  the  dairy 
arrangements,  being  followed  from  room  to  room 
by  the  farmer's  indignant  wife.  Finally  he  said, 
"Show  me  the  strainer  which  you  use  in  the  milk," 
and  she  brought  an  old  shirt,  very  much  soiled. 
Looking  at  it  in  dismay  the  inspector  said,  "Could 
you  not,  at  least,  use  a  clean  shirt?'*  At  this  the 
woman's  patience  gave  way  and  she  declared,  "Well, 
you  needn't  expect  me  to  use  a  clean  shirt  to  strain 
dirty  milk!" 

The  packing  of  apples  for  market  illustrates  the 
transition  from  the  farmer  economy  in  which  the 
ethical  standards  are  those  of  the  household,  or 
family  group,  to  the  world  economy  in  which  the 
moral  standards  are  those  of  the  world  market. 
Apples  are  packed  by  all  classes  of  farmers,  regardless 
of  varying  religious  profession,  in  an  indifferent 
maimer.    The  typical  farmer  hopes  by  competition 

[175] 


EVOLUTION   OF  THE   COMMUNITY 

with  his  neighbors  to  gain  a  possibly  better  price. 
Instances  of  such  successes  as  come  to  certain  family 
groups  are  endlessly  discussed  by  farmers;  and  the 
highest  ideal  that  one  meets  among  farmers  who 
sell  apples  throughout  the  Eastern  States  is  expressed 
in  the  instance  of  some  family  who  have  improved 
their  own  farm  and  their  own  orchard,  so  as  to  win 
for  the  family  or  the  farm  a  reputation  in  some  par- 
ticular market  and  thus  to  gain  a  higher  price. 

Contrast  with  this  the  marketing  of  apples  by  the 
Western  fruit  growers'  Associations.  Among  them, 
as  for  instance  in  the  Hood  Valley,  Oregon,  apples 
are  packed  not  by  the  farm  owner  with  a  view  to 
competing  with  his  neighbors,  but  by  the  committee 
representing  the  whole  district.  The  individual 
farmer  has  no  access  to  the  market.  He  cannot 
hide  his  poor  fruit  in  an  envelope  of  his  best  fruit, 
so  as  to  deceive  the  buyer.  The  committee  has  a 
reputation  to  maintain  on  behalf  of  the  association, 
not  of  the  individual.  The  apples  are  marketed 
on  their  merits  in  accordance  with  a  certain  standard. 
The  impersonal  demands  of  the  world  economy  are 
kept  in  mind.  The  individual  farmer  and  farm  are 
forgotten.  The  result  is  that  these  far  western 
growers,  whose  fruit  is  said  in  the  East  to  be  inferior 
in  flavor  to  the  apples  of  New  York  and  New  Eng- 
land, can  sell  their  product  in  the  eastern  market  at 
a  higher  price  per  box  than  the  New  York  or  New 
England  farmer  can  secure  per  barrel. 

The  transition  from  farming  to  exploiting  has 
[1761 


RURAL   MORALITY 

brought  out  in  full  view  the  wastefulness  of  the 
farmer  economy  which  is  being  succeeded  by  ex- 
ploitation. The  whole  doctrine  of  conservation 
belongs  in  this  transition.  Economy  means,  liter- 
ally, housekeeping.  The  same  meaning  apjjears 
in  the  word  husbandry.  It  is  a  principle  of  saving. 
Its  extraordinary  value  at  the  present  time  is  due 
to  our  sudden  sense  of  the  wastefulness  of  farm  life 
in  recent  years.  Edward  van  Alstyne,  an  agricul- 
tural authority  in  New  York,  says,  **We  farmers 
think  we  are  most  economical,  but  we  are  the  most 
wasteful  of  all  men."  The  wastefulness  of  Ameri- 
can farming  begins  in  the  tillage  of  too  many  acres. 
The  farmer  prefers  wide  fields  even  at  the  cost  of 
poor  crops. 

The  New  York  Central  Railroad,  which  is  carry- 
ing on  a  propaganda  of  husbandry,  has  app)ointed 
a  man  as  expert  farmer  who  increased  the  yield  of 
potatoes  on  his  land  from  sixty  to  three  hundred 
bushels  per  acre.  This  brings  out  clearly  that  his 
neighbors  are  still  producing  sixty  bushels  per  acre, 
wasting  four-fifths  of  their  land  values.  This  waste 
is  a  wrong  that  should  be  denounced  in  the  country 
church  just  as  sternly  as  doctrinal  sins,  which  have 
occupied  the  attention  of  country  ministers  in  the 
past. 

Expert  farmers  say  that  if  corn-stalks  for  fodder 

are  left  out  in  the  field  until  they  are  fed  to  the  cattle 

they  lose  forty  to  fifty  per  cent  of  their  food  values. 

This  waste  is  sinful,  but  the  sin  is  visible  only  in  the 

[1771 
u 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

new  economy  of  exploitation  which  counts  all  values 
in  terms  of  cash.  No  sooner  is  the  sinfulness  of  waste 
observed  than  its  connections  with  moral  delin- 
quencies of  coimtry  people  becomes  clear.  In  the 
improvement  of  rural  morality  due  to  the  sifting  of 
country  people  during  the  farmer  period,  it  becomes 
evident  that  among  a  people  so  serious-minded  some 
delinquencies  still  remain.  The  immoralities  that 
still  lurk  and  fester  in  the  country  are  due  very  largely 
to  waste.  This  waste  of  human  things  is  parallel 
to  the  waste  of  economic  values. 

In  a  conference  there  was  some  difficulty  in  per- 
suading a  certain  country  minister  to  speak.  When 
finally  he  arose  he  said,  "I  am  not  much  interested 
in  the  scientific  analysis  of  the  country  church.  All 
I  am  interested  in  is  sin."  One  wonders  whether  he 
was  dealing  with  the  sins  of  the  country  in  their 
causes  or  in  their  effects,  or  was  he  simply  concerned 
with  the  sins  which  consist  in  opposing  the  doctrines 
of  his  particular  denomination,  whatever  it  was. 
This  wastefulness  of  the  values  in  the  soil  enters 
into  the  social  life  of  the  country.  Farmers  care  as 
little  for  the  social  values  as  for  land  values.  Young 
men  and  women  ignore  the  moral  importance  of 
httle  things.  They  are  not  taught  that  coarseness 
is  wrong.  They  are  not  made  to  realize  that  clean- 
liness and  courtesy  and  reverence  for  the  human  body 
are  of  vital  importance  in  life. 

Country  people  are  prudish  and  they  cover  with  a 
strict  reserve  all  discussion  of  the  moral  relations 

[178] 


RURAL   MORALITY 

of  men  and  women.  Yet  in  the  same  communities 
there  is  loose  private  conversation  and  coarse  ref- 
erences are  common.  The  strict  standard  of  the 
household  prevails  within  its  limits.  Books  and 
magazines  must  not  discuss,  however  seriously,  the 
problems  of  life.  But  in  the  intercourse  of  the  com- 
munity there  is  not  the  same  care.  The  moral  life 
of  country  people  requires  cultivation  of  the  leisure 
hours,  the  casual  talk,  the  occasional  meetings  of 
men  and  women,  and  especially  of  young  people. 

The  sale  of  votes  in  every  election  is  a  fixed  quan- 
tity in  the  life  of  certain  country  towns.  It  is  to  be 
counted  on  each  year.  The  number  of  votes  for 
sale  in  each  town  is  a  known  proportion  of  the  whole, 
and  through  certain  counties  the  selling  of  votes  is 
the  political  factor  everywhere  present.  These 
uniform  facts  point  to  a  common  cause.  That 
cause  is  the  degeneration  of  a  proportion  of  the  rural 
population  into  peasantry. 

The  growth  of  a  peasant  population  in  America 
is  surely  our  greatest  danger.  A  j)easantry  is  a  rural 
population  whose  moral  and  spiritual  state  are  con- 
trolled by  their  material  states.  There  may  be  rich 
peasants,  though  most  peasants  are  poor.  Peasants 
are  a  specialized  class,  incapable  of  self-government 
and  controlled  by  some  political  masters  who  exer- 
cise for  them  essential  rights  of  citizenship.  The 
peasants  in  Europe  are  the  last  to  receive  the  ballot. 
In  America  they  are  the  first  to  surrender  the  ballot 
by  selling  their  votes. 

[1791 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

A  young  minister  called  to  a  country  parish  de- 
nounced the  sale  of  votes,  in  his  first  year,  and  pub- 
licly fixed  the  whole  blame  on  a  prominent  political 
leader  of  the  town,  who  was  there  present  in  the 
church.  His  criticism  was  resented  by  the  whole 
community.  He  was  right,  and  so  were  they.  It 
is  well  to  denounce  the  purchase  of  votes,  but  the 
duty  of  the  country  church  to  Americanize  the  peas- 
ant class  is  the  greater  duty.  The  presence  of  such  a 
class  in  a  town  infallibly  leads  to  this  iniquity.  The 
sale  of  votes  is  as  bad  as  the  sale  of  woman's  virtue, 
and  both  have  an'  automatic  tendency  to  degrade 
the  population. 

The  danger  sign  of  peasantry  is  a  degraded  stand- 
ard of  life.  In  this  town  there  is  one  household  in 
which  nobody  works  but  the  mother.  "How  they 
live  beats  me,"  is  the  public  comment  of  the  neigh- 
bors. Through  the  winter  into  that  house  are 
crowded  the  father  and  mother,  two  sons  and  two 
daughters,  the  husband  of  one  daughter  and  their 
two  children,  with  three  other  small  children,  whose 
presence  in  the  house  is  due  to  the  loose  good  nature 
of  the  family.  There  is  an  indolent  uncle  of  these 
children.  None  of  the  household  follows  any  gainful 
occupation.  The  table  is  furnished  with  potatoes 
and  pork.  The  attraction  of  the  household  is  the 
easy,  loose,  good-nature  of  all  its  members.  There 
is  no  one  to  complain  of  the  indolence  of  the  five 
grown  men  who  lounge  about  through  the  winter 
days.  « 

^[180] 


RURAL   MORALITY 

The  presence  of  such  a  household  in  a  town  means 
degradation.  Three  of  these  men  can  be  purchased 
for  money  to  vote,  though  they  cannot  be  hired  for 
money  to  work.  The  daughters  of  the  household 
are  an  equally  dangerous  factor  in  the  countryside. 
The  cause  of  this  moral  peril  is  the  low  grade  of  living 
to  which  the  family  has  sunk.  There  is  no  known 
state  of  ill-health  to  account  for  their  indolence. 
The  first  duty  of  the  church  in  such  a  community 
is  to  regenerate  such  a  household  and  to  lift  the 
standard  of  ambition  of  its  members. 

Slowly  the  country  town  is  coming  to  realize  that 
its  reputation  as  well  as  its  progress  is  determined 
by  this  grade  of  citizen.  No  exceptional  success 
on  the  part  of  one  or  more  families  and  no  substantial, 
goodness  by  a  whole  grade  of  the  population  can 
compensate  for  the  lowering  of  the  standard  of  the 
whole  town  by  these  people.  The  life  and  death, 
the  reputation  and  the  progress  of  the  town  are 
dependent  upon  the  extinguishment  of  these  peasant 
conditions. 

This  is  illustrated  by  the  fact  that  where  votes  are 
for  sale  in  a  town  those  purchased  votes  determine 
the  election  in  the  majority  of  cases.  They  consti- 
tute the  movable  margin  between  the  two  parties; 
and  by  shifting  them  one  way  or  the  other  the  polit- 
ical policy  of  the  town  is  determined.  This  fact 
illustrates  the  whole  moral  situation  of  the  town,  for 
just  by  the  same  flexible  margin  is  the  moral  life 
of  the  town  determined.     The  duty  of  the  church 

[181] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

therefore  is  with  the  people  upon  the  economic  and 
social  margin  of  the  life  of  the  rural  community. 

The  farmer's  moral  standards  are  opposed  to  com- 
bination. He  believes  in  personal  righteousness  and 
family  morals.  He  does  not  beheve  in  the  moral 
control  of  the  individual  or  the  household  by  the 
economic  group.  It  has  been  impossible,  therefore, 
to  combine  the  farmers  in  the  East  in  any  general 
way  so  as  to  control  their  markets  by  maintaining 
a  high  standard  of  product.  The  only  control  that 
is  dreamed  of  by  the  leaders  of  the  farmers  is  the 
control  of  the  quantity  of  their  products.  They  do 
not  think  of  combination  which  will  control  them- 
selves, and  so  maintain  a  higher  quality  of  product 
in  order  that  thus  they  may  dominate  the  market 
in  the  great  city. 

The  present  state  of  ethical  opinion  among  Eastern 
farmers  is  not  in  sympathy  with  the  ethical  demands 
of  city  populations.  The  Western  fruit  growers' 
associations  have  fixed  the  standard  for  the  farmers 
who  raise  the  fruit,  first  of  all,  and  by  means  of  this 
standard  they  have  conquered  the  market  in  distant 
cities.  The  standard  to  which  they  compel  their 
members  to  conform  is  the  standard  of  the  demand 
in  the  world  market.  If  the  milk  farmers  about 
New  York  City  are  to  combine  they  must  first  im- 
pose a  self-denying  ordinance  upon  their  own  mem- 
bers and  furnish  the  city  with  a  quality  of  milk  in 
harmony  with  the  demands  of  modern  sanitary 
experts.     This  is  an  ethical  principle  not  of  the 

[182] 


RURAL   MORALITY 

pioneer  or  the  farmer  economy,  but  of  the  new  hus- 
bandry to  which  very  few  farmers  have  conformed. 
Li  the  building  of  country  communities,  therefore, 
the  ethical  teaching  must  be  of  a  new  order.  There 
is  already  a  general  teaching  of  morality  in  the 
country  churches.  The  temperance  reform  is  a 
moral  propaganda  born  of  the  farmer  economy. 
The  expulsion  of  the  saloon  from  country  places  has 
been  in  obedience  to  the  farmer's  conscience.  The 
temperance  reform  exhibits  the  transformation  from 
individual  ethics  which  were  advocated  in  1880  to 
communal  ethics  which  are  represented  in  the  local 
option  aspects  of  this  reform.  Li  1880  the  individual 
was  asked  to  sign  the  pledge  of  total  abstinence. 
In  those  days  it  was  as  important  that  innocent 
children  sign  the  pledge  as  that  drunkards  sign  it. 
The  lists  of  pledge  signers  were  padded  with  the  names 
of  persons  who  had  never  tasted  strong  drink.  In 
1893  the  Anti-Saloon  League  began  its  agitation, 
which  has  proceeded  among  country  people  with 
increasing  influence.  The  individual  is  ignored 
and  the  pledge  is  signed  now  by  the  community, 
by  the  county  or  by  the  state.  The  attack  is  not 
upon  the  individual  drunkard,  but  upon  the  commu- 
nity institution,  the  saloon.  This  is  a  great  gain  in 
the  direction  of  social  ethics.  It  illustrates  the  trans- 
formation from  the  pioneer  whose  impact  was  upon 
the  individual  to  the  standards  of  the  exploiter  period 
in  which  the  impact  is  upon  the  commercial  insti- 
tution.    The  local  option  movement  has  had  its 

[183] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

growth  in  the  period  of  exploitation  dated  by  Prof. 
Ross  from  1890.  In  this  movement  the  country 
churches  have  been  distributing  centers,  the  places 
of  discussion  and  nuclei  of  moral  energy. 

If  the  general  moral  standards  of  country  people 
are  to  be  transformed  from  the  pioneer  formulae 
to  those  of  the  modern  world  economy,  the  country 
churches  must  be  led  by  men  trained  in  economics 
and  reinforced  by  a  thorough  knowledge  of  social 
processes.  The  temperance  movement  already  be- 
gins to  show  the  deficiencies  of  a  propaganda  purely 
negative.  Its  leaders  have  shown  no  conspicuous 
sympathy  with  the  play-ground  movement,  which 
is  an  essential  part  of  the  same  ethical  process.  If 
the  saloon  is  expelled  something  must  be  put  in  its 
place,  but  the  temperance  reformers  have  not  been 
wise  enough  for  substitution:  they  have  only  been 
skilful  in  expulsion.  Country  life,  in  its  representa- 
tive communities,  suffers  today  from  monotony  and 
emptiness. 

The  ministers,  teachers  and  other  rural  leaders 
need  the  training  which  will  equip  them  in  positive 
and  aggressive  social  construction.  As  the  economy 
of  the  exploiter  comes  in  to  transform  the  country 
commimity  it  is  necessary  for  the  preacher  and  the 
teacher  to  train  the  population  in  the  ethical  stand- 
ards of  the  new  time.  Naturally  new  contractual 
relations  will  prevail  in  business,  and  trusts  will  be 
committed  to  the  leading  men  in  the  farming  com- 
munity, for  which  they  need  definite  moral  prepara- 

[184] 


RURAL   MORALITY 

tion.  There  is  many  a  farmer  in  the  United  States 
who  may  be  safely  entrusted  with  the  honor  of  a 
woman,  but  cannot  be  entrusted  with  a  million  dol- 
lars to  spend  in  the  interest  of  the  community.  In 
many  a  country  community  it  is  perfectly  safe  to 
leave  the  door  unlocked,  but  it  is  not  safe  to  purchase 
a  quart  of  milk  for  a  child.  There  is  many  a  farmer 
from  whom  it  is  morally  safe  to  purchase  an  acre  of 
ground,  but  one  cannot  be  sure  in  purchasing  a  cow 
from  him  that  she  will  not  be  tuberculous.  These 
are  new  standards  not  required  by  the  old  economy 
and  not  taught  in  the  old  meeting-house. 

One  defect  of  the  country  church  at  the  present 
time  is  that  it  has  for  the  countryman  no  message 
appropriate  to  the  struggle  in  which  he  is  actually 
attempting  to  do  right.  Many  churches  in  the  coun- 
try teach  only  the  standards  of  right  and  wrong  to 
which  the  farmers  already  conform.  For  a  short 
time  a  new  minister  is  popular  with  them  because 
his  new  voice  and  his  fresh  elocution  contain  a  subtle 
flattery.  He  denounces  the  sins  to  which  they  are 
not  incHned  and  praises  the  virtues  which  they  have 
learned  to  practise  from  their  fathers.  But  after 
about  six  months  of  such  preaching  the  farmer 
wearies  of  a  preacher  with  no  new  message.  Indeed 
the  countryman  is  puzzled  and  perplexed  by  modern 
situations  about  which  the  minister  has  no  knowledge. 
The  farmer  is  forced  to  be  an  economist,  but  the 
minister  has  never  studied  economics.  The  farmer 
is  face  to  face  with  problems  of  exploitation.    The 

[1851 


EVOLUTION   OF  THE    COMMUNITY 

values  not  merely  of  land  but  of  money  are  in  his 
thought.  But  the  preacher  has  had  no  training  in 
finance  and  he  cannot  speak  wisely  or  surely  upon 
the  marginal  problems  with  which  the  farmer  is 
perplexed. 

The  household  economy  of  the  farm  is  no  longer 
suflBcient.  The  sins  are  not  merely  those  of  adultery 
and  disobedience  and  disloyalty.  They  are  the  sins 
of  the  world  market  and  the  world  economy.  In 
these  moral  situations  the  minister  is  silent.  He 
knows  nothing  about  them.  He  is  inclined  merely 
to  object  if  the  farmer  purchases  an  automobile. 
He  does  not  see  what  the  automobile  is  to  do  for  the 
agriculturist.  Sunday  observance,  total  abstinence, 
family  purity,  honesty  as  to  personal  property,  these 
are  his  stock  in  trade  and  these  alone.  It  requires, 
therefore,  a  genius  to  preach  in  the  country,  because 
only  the  most  brilliant  preaching  can  render  tra- 
ditional moral  standards  interesting  among  country 
people. 

It  is  proverbial  among  ministers  that  "the  best 
preachers  are  needed  in  the  country."  The  reason 
for  this  is  that  none  of  the  preachers  has  any  but  an 
outworn  standard  to  preach.  They  must  reinforce 
it  with  extraordinary  eloquence  in  order  to  keep  it 
attractive.  Very  ordinary  men,  however,  if  they 
understand  the  modern  spirit,  can  hold  the  attention 
of  country  people.  The  grange  has  ministered  to 
the  farmer's  conscience.  Yet  its  leaders  have  been 
commonplace  men,  unknown  to  the  nation  at  large. 

[186] 


RURAL   MORALITY 

The  great  movements  which  have  influenced  the 
farmer  in  the  past  twenty  years  have  most  of  them 
been  pushed  to  success  by  men  unknown  to  any  but 
farmers.  What  orator  has  come  into  national  prom- 
inence out  of  the  enterprises  of  agricultural  life  in 
the  past  two  decades?  The  farmer  does  not  need 
great  eloquence,  but  he  does  need  a  thorough  under- 
standing of  the  moral  and  spiritual  situations  arising 
out  of  the  exploiter  process  in  which  he  is  immersed. 
He  needs  moral  teachers  for  the  era  of  husbandry 
which  is  dawning  in  the  country. 

"There  is  an  actual  and  most  conspicuous  dearth 
of  leadership  of  a  high  order  in  rural  life.  This  is 
evident  when  we  consider  the  economic  and  social 
importance  of  the  agriculturists.  The  agriculturists 
constitute  about  half  of  our  population,  they  owned 
over  21  per  cent  of  the  total  wealth  in  1900,  and  in 
1909  then-  products  had  a  value  of  $8,760,000,  or 
just  about  one-third  that  of  the  entire  nation  for 
that  year.  Yet  this  vast  and  fundamental  element 
of  our  nation  elects  no  farmer  presidents,  has  scarcely 
any  of  its  members  in  congress,  but  few  in  state 
legislatures  as  compared  with  other  classes;  it  has 
no  governors  nor  judges.  In  fact,  this  class  is  almost 
without  leadership  in  the  sphere  of  poHtical  life  and 
must  depend  on  representatives  of  other  classes 
to  secure  justice.  Economically  it  is  relatively 
powerless  hkewise,  possessing  practically  no  control 
over  markets  and  prices  through  organization  in  an 
age    when    organization    dominates    all    economic 

[1871 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

lines,  accepting  interest  rates  and  freight  rates  offered 
it  without  the  ability  to  check  or  regulate  them, 
and  buying  its  goods  at  whatever  prices  the  industrial 
producers  set.  Its  leadership  up  to  the  present 
time  has  been  of  the  sporadic  and  discontinuous 
sort.  It  has  been  individualistic,  lacking  social 
outlook  and  vision.  Consequently  for  community 
purposes  its  significance  has  been  slight.^" 

1  Prof.  John  M.  Gillette,  in  American  Journal  of  Sociology,  March,  1910. 


im] 


xm 

RECREATION 

THE  time  has  passed  in  which  the  amusements 
of  the  community  can  be  neglected  or  dis- 
missed with  mere  condemnation.  In  the 
husbandry  of  the  country  every  factor  must  be 
counted.  We  are  dealing  no  longer  with  a  fatalistic 
country  life,  but  with  the  economy  of  all  resources. 
Therefore  the  neglecting  of  the  play  life  and  ignoring 
the  leisure  occupations  of  a  country  people  are  in- 
consistent with  the  new  economy. 

Moreover  the  ancient  method  of  condemning  all 
recreations  passed  away  with  the  austere  economy 
of  earlier  days.  The  churches  in  the  country  no 
longer  discipline  their  members  for  "going  to  frolics." 
The  country  community  no  longer  is  of  one  mind  as 
to  the  standard  by  which  recreation  shall  be  governed. 
Yet  every  event  of  this  sort  is  closely  inspected  by 
the  general  attention. 

The  experience  of  the  cities,  in  which  social  con- 
trol has  gone  much  farther  than  in  the  country  under 
the  deHberate  harmonizing  of  life  with  economic 
principles,  has  much  to  contribute  for  the  building 
up  of  rural  society  through  various  means,  among 
which  is  recreation. 


EVOLUTION    OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

The  need  of  recreative  activities  in  the  country 
is  shown  by  recent  surveys  undertaken  in  Pennsyl- 
vania, Indiana,  Illinois,  Missouri  and  Kentucky 
by  the  Presbyterian  Department  of  Church  and 
Country  Life.  Generally,  throughout  the  farming 
population,  it  was  discovered  that  no  common 
occasions  and  no  common  experiences  fell  to  the 
lot  of  the  country  community.  In  the  course  of 
the  round  year  there  is,  in  thousands  of  farming 
communities  in  Pennsylvania,  Indiana  and  Illi- 
nois, no  single  meeting  that  brings  all  the  people 
together.  The  small  town  has  its  fireman's  parade, 
to  the  small  city  comes  once  a  year  the  circus  and 
to  the  great  city  comes  an  anniversary  or  an  expo- 
sition. Every  year  there  is  some  common  experience 
which  welds  the  population,  increases  acquaintance 
and  intensifies  social  unity.  The  tillage  of  the  soil 
in  those  farming  communities  from  which  the  black- 
smith, the  storekeeper,  the  peddler  and  the  shoe- 
maker have  departed,  is  very  lonely. 

The  telephone  is  the  new  system  of  nerves  for  the 
rural  organism,  but  the  telephone  is  a  cold,  steel 
wire  instead  of  the  warm  and  cordial  personal  meet- 
ings with  which  the  countryside  was  once  enlivened. 
In  eighty  country  towns  in  Pennsylvania,  of  which 
fifty  are  purely  agricultural,  we  found  in  our  survey 
only  three  that  had  a  common  leadership  and  a  com- 
mon assembling.  The  life  of  the  people  in  these 
communities  is  so  solitary  as  to  be  almost  repellent. 
Their  social  habits  are  those  of  aggressive  loneliness. 

[190] 


RECREATION 

This  isolation  in  the  pioneer  days  made  the  country 
people  cordial  to  the  visitor:  but  in  the  coming  of  the 
new  economy  the  farmer  shrinks  from  strangers, 
because  he  has  become  accustomed  to  social  divisions 
and  classifications  in  which  he  feels  himself  inferior; 
so  that  the  loneliness  of  country  life  has  become  not 
merely  geographical,  but  sociological.  The  farmer 
is  shut  in  not  merely  by  distances  in  miles,  but  by 
distances  of  social  aversion  and  suspicion.  Differ- 
ence has  become  a  more  hostile  influence  in  the  coun- 
try than  distance. 

Organized  industry  necessitates  organized  recrea- 
tion. The  subjection  of  mind  and  body  to  machine 
labor  requires  a  reaction  in  the  form  of  play.  All 
factory  and  industrial  populations,  without  exception, 
provide  themselves  with  play-grounds  of  some  sort. 
In  the  city  where  no  public  provision  is  made  the 
streets  are  used  by  the  boys  for  their  games,  even 
at  the  risk  of  injury  or  death  from  the  passing  traffic. 
Jane  Addam  has  shown,  in  a  fine  literary  appeal  in 
her  "The  Spirit  of  Youth  and  the  City  Streets,'* 
the  necessity  of  some  provision  for  the  recreations 
of  the  young  and  of  working  people  in  a  great  city. 

This  necessity  is  not  primarily  due  to  congestion 
of  the  population.  Its  real  sources  are  in  the  system 
and  organization  by  which  modern  work  is  done. 
This  necessity  is  as  characteristic  of  the  rural  com- 
munity as  it  is  of  the  city,  for  on  the  farms  as  well 
as  in  the  factory  towns  labor  is  performed  by  ma- 
chinery.   This   means   that   through   the   working 

[191] 


EVOLUTION   OF  THE   COMMUNITY 

hours  of  the  day,  from  eight  to  twelve  in  number, 
the  attention  of  the  worker  must  be  concentrated 
upon  one  task,  patiently  and  steadfastly  pursued. 
The  machine  worker  exerts  himself  in  the  control 
of  great  powers,  horse  power  or  steam  power,  com- 
mitted to  his  charge.  He  has  no  opportunity  for 
languor  or  rest.  He  has  no  choice.  His  job  drives 
him.  His  movements  are  fixed  and  regulated  by 
the  nature  of  the  machine  with  which  he  is  working, 
and  of  the  task  to  be  accompUshed.  At  the  end  of 
the  day  he  has  acted  involuntarily  and  mechanically 
imtil  his  own  powers  of  will  and  choice  are  accumu- 
lated. Being  repressed  through  long  hours  of  pre- 
scribed labor  he  is  ready  for  a  rebound.  His  nature 
demands  self-expression.  This  elf-expression  takes 
the  form  of  play. 

The  recreation  which  results  is  organized.  The 
laborer  in  a  factory  or  on  a  railroad  is  conscious 
of  organization  by  the  very  nature  of  his  work.  He 
labors  with  a  machine  driven  by  powers  unseen  but 
of  whose  operation  he  is  aware,  in  a  great  plant 
wherein  his  own  labor  is  co-ordinated  with  that  of 
other  workers  like  unto  himself.  The  hours  of  self- 
devotion  and  prescribed  attention  leave  him  free 
for  sympathy  with  the  other  workers,  whose  action 
and  whose  toil  are  organized  with  his  own,  and  on 
whose  skill  and  devotion  his  life  and  limb  and  the 
continuance  of  his  job  are  dependent.  When  he 
turns  to  recreation  he  naturally  seeks  to  continue 
the  silent  communion  with  his  fellow-workers.    The 

[1921 


RECREATION 

repressed  personal  energies  are  already  prepared  for 
team  work.  He  comes  out  of  the  factory  bubbling 
over  with  good  fellowship  and  seeking  for  comrade- 
ship in  the  self-expression  which  the  long  hours  of 
the  day  have  denied  him. 

The  result  is  that  in  every  factory  town  the  open 
spaces  are  devoted  to  playground  uses.  Vacant 
lots,  unoccupied  fields,  and  the  open  street  are  used 
by  men  and  boys  for  their  games. 

Exactly  the  same  experience  results  from  school 
and  college  organization  of  education  work.  The 
student  in  the  common  schools  does  not  choose  his 
course;  it  is  prescribed  for  him  by  his  family  and  by 
society.  He  does  not  go  to  school  because  he  is 
mentally  ambitious,  but  because  the  standards  of 
universal  education  require  it  of  him.  Especially 
in  the  colleges  which  inherit  a  great  name  and 
attract  young  men  and  women  for  social  advantage, 
the  students  are  characterized  by  an  involuntary 
subjection  to  the  routine  of  modern  pedagogy.  Ed- 
ucational discipline  is  imposed  upon  them  through 
the  long  hours  of  lectures  and  laboratory  and  reci- 
tations. The  students  in  high  school  and  college 
are  accumulating  a  rebound  of  voluntary  action. 
This  organized  self-expression  takes  the  form  of 
school  and  college  athletics,  which  has  long  since 
been  adopted  as  a  part  of  the  educational  routine. 
No  considerable  number  of  educators  are  in  favor 
of  abolishing  it,  and  only  a  few  venture  to  believe 
in  restricting  college  athletics.    Its  moral  value  is 

[193] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

everywhere  tacitly  recognizfed,  and  pretty  gen- 
erally it  is  consciously  accepted  by  college  and 
school  faculties. 

Play  of  this  sort  has  great  moral  value.  We  are 
hired  to  work,  and  we  do  it  without  choice  or  enthu- 
siasm, but  in  play  the  natural  forces  and  the  personal 
choice  are  at  their  maximum.  Every  action  is  chosen 
and  is  saturated  with  the  pleasure  of  seK-expression. 
The  result  is  that  play  has  high  ethical  value. 

Especially  has  organized  recreation  great  moral 
power,  because  it  involves  team  work,  and  the  sub- 
jection of  the  individual  to  the  success  of  the  team. 
Organized  recreation  teaches  self-denial  in  a  multi- 
tude of  experiences  which  are  all  the  more  powerful 
because  they  are  not  prescribed  by  any  teacher  or 
preacher,  but  are  the  free  natural  expression  of  the 
human  spirit  under  the  government  of  chosen  asso- 
ciates working  out  together  a  common  purpose. 

Therefore  it  is  necessary  to  use  play  for  the  recre- 
ation of  country  life.  The  word  is  hteral,  not 
figurative.  It  is  not  a  problem  merely  of  games,  nor 
the  question  of  gymnasium,  but  a  profound  ethical 
enterprise  of  disciplining  the  whole  population  through 
the  use  of  the  play  spirit.  This  question  must  be 
apiproached  on  the  high  plane  of  the  teaching  of 
modern  theorists,  and  the  experience  of  such  practical 
organizations  as  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Associ- 
ation. 

The  Christian  Associations  began  their  work  in 
the  lifetime  of  present  generations  and  for  accom- 

[194] 


RECREATION 

plishing  certain  purposes  they  have  used  recreation. 
They  provided  a  gymnasium,  at  first,  in  order  to  get 
men  into  the  prayer-meeting.  They  offered  social 
parlors  in  which  young  men  could  always  hear  the 
sound  of  sacred  song.  But  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association  has  traveled  far  from  its  crude 
and  early  use  of  recreation.  Some  of  the  early 
Association  leaders  are  still  living  and  still  leading. 
They  have  steadily  advanced  with  care  and  wisdom 
in  the  use  of  recreation.  Within  very  recent  years 
the  leaders  of  the  Associations  have  countenanced 
the  use  of  billiard  tables.  No  longer  is  the  gym- 
nasium an  annex  to  the  prayer-meeting.  It  has 
values  of  its  own.  Without  moralizing,  these  prac- 
tical men  have  discovered  that  the  social  parlors 
were  good  for  ends  of  their  own  and  not  merely 
as  a  place  for  hearing  the  distant  sound  of  hymns. 
In  other  words,  recreation  is  a  form  of  ethical  culture. 
Rev.  C.  O.  Gill,  who  was  captain  of  the  Yale 
football  team  in  1890,  has  had  an  extended  experience 
among  farmers.  He  says,  "The  reason  why  farmers 
cannot  co-operate  is  in  the  fact  that  they  did  not  play 
when  they  were  boys.  They  never  learned  team 
work.  They  cannot  yield  to  one  another,  or  sur- 
render themselves  to  the  common  purpose."  The 
writer,  observing  Mr.  Gill  coaching  a  university  team, 
commented  upon  the  good  spirits  with  which  a  player 
yielded  his  place  on  the  team  just  before  the  victory. 
Mr.  Gill  had  removed  him,  as  he  explained  to  him, 
not  because  he  played  poorly,  but  because  a  new 

[1051 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

formation  required  a  rearrangement  of  the  team. 
In  reply  to  comment  upon  the  player's  self-forget- 
f Illness,  Mr.  Gill  said,  "Football  is  the  greatest 
school  of  morals  in  the  country.  I  learned  more 
ethics  from  the  coaches  when  I  was  an  undergraduate 
in  Yale,  than  from  all  other  sources  combined." 

It  is  this  high  ethical  value  of  recreation  which 
causes  the  working  man  to  defend  his  amateur  base- 
ball team,  and  makes  it  so  hard  to  repress  Sunday 
games.  The  working  man  admits  the  high  value 
of  the  Sabbath,  but  he  sets  a  value  also  upon  recrea- 
tion, and  without  analysis  of  the  philosophy  either 
of  the  Sabbath  or  of  the  play-ground,  stoutly  main- 
tains the  goodness  of  recreation  and  its  necessity 
for  those  who  have  labored  all  the  week.  "I  work 
six  days  in  the  week,  and  I  must  have  some  time  for 
recreation,"  is  the  working  man's  answer  to  all 
Sunday  reformers.  Waiving  for  a  moment  the 
question  of  the  Sabbath,  the  human  process  to  which 
the  working  man  testifies  is  exactly  as  he  describes 
it.  Organized  labor  and  systematic  industry  will 
react  on  any  population  in  the  form  of  systematic 
recreation. 

The  Play-ground  Movement,  therefore,  is  extend- 
ing itself  throughout  the  country  by  the  very  influ- 
ence of  modern  industry.  Given  intelligence  to 
interpret  it,  and  one  understands  at  once  the  desire 
of  philanthropic  and  public  spirited  men  and  women 
to  provide  *'a  playground  beside  every  school  build- 
ing, open  for  all  the  people." 

[196] 


RECREATION 

Dr.  Luther  H.  Gulick,  who  was  born  of  missionary 
parents,  was  trained  in  religious  schools,  graduated 
as  a  physician,  employed  for  years  in  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association,  and  then  made  Play-Ground 
Director  in  the  New  York  Public  Schools,  has  be- 
come legitimately  the  heir  of  the  experiences  of  the 
modern  social  conscience.  He  has  summed  up  the 
philosophy  of  working  men,  students,  and  of  the 
people  whose  lives  are  systematized,  in  a  sentence: 
"There  is  a  higher  morality  in  the  reactions  of  play 
than  in  the  experiences  of  labor." 

The  tradition  of  the  church  has  been  opposed  to 
amusement  and  recreation.  The  church  of  our 
fathers  recognized  the  moral  possibilities  of  play 
by  calling  all  play  immoral.  The  early  Quakers 
filled  their  records  in  the  eighteenth  century  with 
denunciations  of  "froUicks."  Consciously  they  de- 
nounced amusement,  acting  no  doubt  in  a  wise  under- 
standing of  the  rude,  boisterous  character  of  the 
pioneer's  social  gatherings.  Only  unconsciously  did 
the  Quakers  cultivate  the  spirit  of  recreation  in  their 
social  gatherings.  It  was  permitted  to  have  but  few 
and  repressed  opportunities.  The  decadence  of  the 
Quaker  church  is  probably  due,  in  a  considerable 
measure,  to  their  stubborn  unwillingness  to  see  both 
sides  of  this  question.  They  saw  that  recreation 
was  inmoral.  They  refused  to  see  that  its  possible 
moral  value  was  as  great  as  its  moral  danger. 

Extensive  correspondence  with  working  pastors, 
by  means  of  a  system  of  questions  sent  out  from  a 

[197] 


EVOLUTION   OF  THE   COMMUNITY 

New  York  office,  has  brought  this  result.  In  answer 
to  the  question,  "What  amusements  of  moral  value 
are  there  in  the  community?"  the  answer,  "Base- 
ball, boating,  tennis,  golf,  bicycling,  etc."  A  smaller 
number  of  recreations  was  named  in  answer  to  the 
inquiry  for  immoral  sports.  The  subsequent  ques- 
tion, "What  is  your  position  before  the  community?" 
brought  from  the  minister  very  often  this  answer: 
"I  am  known  to  be  opposed  to  all  sports."  Few 
ministers  realize  the  inconsistency  of  this  position. 
They  stand  before  the  community  as  the  professed 
advocates  of  pubUc  and  private  morahty,  and  they 
stand  also  before  the  community  as  the  professed 
and  violent  opponents,  often,  of  the  pubHc  sports 
which  are  known  to  the  young  men  and  workingmen 
generally  as  promoters  of  ethical  culture  and  moral 
training.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  the  churches,  in 
these  communities,  are  often  deserted  by  the  common 
people? 

In  Lewistown,  Pa.,  the  old  Presbyterian  Church 
there,  seeing  the  congested  character  of  the  town 
population  and  the  need  of  breathing-places  for  the 
young  people  and  working  people,  looked  about  for  a 
recreation  field.  The  only  available  ground  is  the 
old  cemetery,  in  which  the  earlier  members  of  the 
congregation  have  buried  their  dead.'  This,  the 
only  open  spot  in  the  center  of  the  town,  it  has  been 
proposed  to  turn  into  a  playground,  the  bodies  of 
the  dead  to  be  disintered  and  laid  reverently  away 
in  a  quieter  place,  and  the  ground  newly  consecrated 

[198] 


RECREATION 

to  the  needs  of  the  living,  and  of  the  young.  The 
action  contemplated  by  this  fine  old  church  is  em- 
blematic of  the  modern  spirit.  Christianity  is  no 
longer  a  mere  reverence  for  death  and  the  other 
world.  But  it  is  an  energetic  service  to  the  young, 
and  the  working  people,  in  this  present  world.  It  is 
no  longer  a  solemn  reverence  for  the  salvation  of  the 
individual  soul  in  a  heaven  unseen,  but  it  is  a  social 
service,  no  less  serious,  unto  the  Hving  and  unto  the 
young  and  the  employed. 

Certain  modern  sports,  such  as  baseball,  are  free 
from  the  corruption  which  has  attached  itself  to 
horse-racing  and  pugilism.  This  corruption  is  not 
in  racing  a  horse,  or  punching  an  opponent.  It  is 
in  the  dishonesty  of  the  race,  for  horsemen  believe 
that  "there  never  was  an  honest  horse-race,"  and  the 
followers  of  the  prize  ring  are  constantly  suspicious 
that  the  fight  will  be  "fixed."  The  first  question 
they  ask  after  the  decision  of  the  referee  is  generally, 
"  Was  it  a  frame-up.'* "  The  moral  power  of  baseball, 
tennis,  football  and  the  other  most  popular  sports, 
is  in  the  confidence  that  the  game  is  fairly  played. 
This  fairness  of  the  game  is  the  widest  extended 
school  of  ethical  culture  that  the  American  and 
British  population  know.  Honorable  recreation 
trains  in  com-age,  manliness,  co-operation,  obedience, 
self-control,  presence  of  mind,  and  in  every  other 
of  the  general  social  virtues.  It  makes  men  citizens 
and  good  soldiers  when  need  comes.  This  was  the 
meaning  of  the  remark  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington, 

[199] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

when,  after  the  conquest  of  Napoleon,  he  returned 
to  view  the  playground  at  Eton,  and  said,  "Here 
the  Battle  of  Waterloo  was  won.** 

For  the  building  up  of  a  community,  therefore, 
the  promotion  of  recreation  is  an  essential.  Just 
as  necessary  as  the  providing  of  common  schools  for 
all  the  people,  is  the  provision  of  public  play-grounds 
for  all  the  people.  As  many  as  are  the  school  houses 
so  many,  generally  speaking,  should  be  the  play- 
groimds  accessible  to  all,  under  the  care  of  trained 
and  responsible  leaders,  in  which,  without  too  much 
government,  the  free  movements  of  the  young  and 
the  abounding  self-expression  of  the  great  mass  of 
the  employed  shall  have  opportunity  to  work  out 
their  own  education  through  play,  into  public  right- 
eousness. 

The  training  of  citizens  for  days  to  come  demands 
exactly  the  qualities  which  are  imparted  on  the 
play-ground.  Morality  is  not  taught  and  ethical 
culture  is  not  imparted  by  precept,  though  precept 
and  exhortation  have  their  due  place  in  the  analysis 
of  moral  and  spiritual  matters,  for  the  thoughtful. 
But  the  great  number  of  people  are  not  ethically 
thoughtful,  and  in  the  acquirement  of  righteousness 
all  people  are  unconscious.  The  desired  action  in 
moral  growth  is  universally  spontaneous.  The  most 
sober  and  intellectual  of  men  must  be  caught  off 
his  guard  and  must  be  lured  into  voluntary  actions 
before  any  moral  habits  can  be  formed  in  him.  Mere 
analysis  of  truth  or  self-examination  makes  no  man 

[200] 


RECREATION 

good.  But  men  become  good  by  doing  things  first, 
and  thinking  of  them  afterward.  They  can  be  just 
as  good  if  they  never  think  about  them,  though  think- 
ing about  ethical  matters  renders  a  service  to  the 
community  as  a  whole. 

It  should  be  the  duty,  therefore,  of  the  churches, 
who  are  acknowledged  before  the  whole  community 
as  repositories  of  the  conscience  of  men,  to  promote 
public  recreation.  Where  necessary  the  church 
should  even  provide  a  play-ground.  In  Galesburg, 
111.,  fifteen  churches  are  co-operating,  through  their 
men's  societies,  in  a  central  council  of  forty  members. 
This  Council  is  made  up  in  the  form  of  four  Com- 
mittees of  ten.  Each  Committee  considers  one  great 
interest  of  the  comr<^unity.  One  of  these  interests 
is  recreation.  It  is  the  duty  of  this  Committee  in 
winter  to  provide  musical  and  literary  entertainment 
and  lectures.  In  the  summer  this  Committee  has 
secured  the  use  of  the  Knox  College  recreation  field, 
and  employing  a  trained  man,  has  opened  it  through- 
out the  summer  as  a  play-ground  for  all  the  children 
of  the  city. 

The  use  of  recreation  for  the  building  up  of  a  com- 
munity seems  to  involve  expensive  apparatus  and 
sometimes  does  so.  Mrs.  Russell  Sage  at  Sag 
Harbor,  Long  Island,  has  expended  many  thousands 
of  dollars  in  the  experiment.  Interested  in  the  chil- 
dren, of  whom  there  are  about  eight  hundred  in  the 
town,  through  the  experience  of  giving  them  a  Christ- 
mas tree,  she  determined  to  devote  to  their  use  a 

[201] 


EVOLUTION   OP  THE   COMMUNITY 

piece  of  land  on  the  borders  of  the  village,  formerly 
used  as  a  fair  ground.  This  work  is  to  have  local 
value  for  the  children  of  this  community,  and  has 
been  used  as  a  demonstration  center  of  the  efficiency 
of  recreation  as  a  moral  discipline  among  the  young. 

But  most  communities  have  not  so  much  money 
to  spend.  The  proposal  of  a  play-ground  or  of  a 
gymnasium  is  itself  sufficient  to  condemn  the  doc- 
trine of  play.  "We  cannot  afford  it,"  settles  the 
whole  question.  In  the  country  expensive  apparatus 
is  not  necessary;  nor  do  the  farmer's  son  and  daughter 
require  in  recreation  so  much  physical  exercise. 
The  gymnasium  is  an  artificial  and  expensive  ma- 
chinery for  inducing  sweat,  but  the  farmer  needs  no 
such  artificial  machine.  The  problem  is  purely  one 
of  play,  not  of  exercise.  For  this  purpose  a  careful 
study  of  the  community,  and  of  its  tendencies  and 
inclinations,  is  necessary.  The  great  essential  of 
recreation  in  the  country  is  the  opportunity  to  meet 
and  to  talk.  Therefore  the  social  life  of  gatherings 
in  the  church,  and  in  the  schoolhouse,  no  matter  what 
their  program,  provided  it  be  innocent,  is  valuable. 
Farmers  will  attend  an  auction,  and  go  a  long  way 
to  a  horse-race,  or  gather  at  a  fair,  without  any  inten- 
tion of  buying  or  selling.  The  fundamental  service 
rendered  by  the  county  fair  and  the  auction  is  an 
opportunity  afforded  to  converse.  This  exercise  of 
the  tongue  is  far  more  important  in  rural  recreation 
than  the  exercise  of  the  biceps.  But  country  people 
cannot  talk  without  an  occasion  which  unlocks  their 

1 202  1 


RECREATION 

tongues.  They  must  not  be  directly  solicited  to 
converse  or  they  are  silent.  If  the  occasion  is  pro- 
vided and  is  made  to  be  suflBciently  plausible  its 
greatest  success  will  be  in  conversation. 

In  almost  every  country  community,  therefore, 
there  should  be  revival,  in  various  forms,  of  the  old 
"Bees,"  which  had  so  much  of  a  place  in  the  former 
economy.  If  there  is  a  widow  who  has  no  one  to  cut 
her  wood,  the  men  of  the  country  church  should  as- 
semble to  do  it.  If  there  is  a  household  whose  bread 
winner  and  husbandman  has  died  at  the  time  of  plant- 
ing corn,  let  the  men  of  the  community  gather  at  an 
appointed  day  and  till  the  ground  for  the  family,  whose 
grief  is  greater  at  that  moment  than  their  need.  Let 
the  women  of  the  community  assemble  at  noon  to 
provide  an  abundant  repast.  This  was  recently  done 
by  a  coimtryside,  at  the  instigation  of  the  minister, 
and  the  effect  of  it  was  lasting  in  its  values  as  well 
as  intense  in  the  joy  of  the  day's  work.  It  seems, 
in  view  of  the  need  of  recreation,  that  no  other  quality 
is  so  important  in  the  country  community  as  a  lively 
leader.  Resourceful,  energetic  and  fertile  men  in 
the  rural  ministry  can  accomplish  vastly  more  than 
conventional,  orderly  and  proper  men. 

The  church  in  which  I  began  my  ministry  used  to 
have  a  play  every  Christmas.  We  built  out  the 
pulpit  platform  with  boards,  we  hung  it  around  with 
curtains,  giving  dressing-room  space,  and  we  placed 
lanterns  in  front  for  foot-lights.  The  first  play  we 
gave  made  us  anxious,  for  the  neighborhood  was  an 

[203] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

old  Quaker  settlement ;  but  we  found  that  the  Quakers 
enjoyed  the  play  immensely  and  were  the  best  actors. 
We  made  it  a  genuine  expression  of  the  Christmas 
spirit.  We  abolished  the  old  "speaking  pieces." 
Our  little  stage  offered  the  young  people  team  work, 
instead  of  individual  elocution.  The  rehearsals 
filled  a  whole  month  with  happy  and  valuable  meet- 
ings. Everybody  co-operated  in  the  labor  necessary 
to  prepare  the  decorations  and  to  take  them  down, 
during  Christmas  week,  and  on  the  night  of  the 
play  everybody  was  on  hand.  Catholic,  Protestant 
and  heathen. 

The  holidays  of  the  passing  year  suggest  the  rec- 
reations of  the  country  church.  These  should  not 
necessarily  be  productive  of  sweat,  but  the  country 
boy  and  girl  do  need  the  recreation  of  laughter  and 
happy  meeting  and  social  liveliness.  Farm  work  is 
lonely  and  monotonous.  Such  immorality  as  there 
is  in  the  country  has  direct  connection  with  the 
tedium  and  dullness  of  long  hours  out-doors,  alone. 
The  recreations  of  country  life  should  be  meetings 
for  the  celebration  of  great  events  of  the  year. 
Easter  expresses  ideas  which  are  age-old  among  coun- 
try people:  it  is  both  a  pagan  festival  and  a  Christian 
anniversary.  If  Easter  is  developed  in  a  celebration 
of  song  or  procession,  of  sermon  and  of  decoration, 
with  full  use  of  its  symbolic  value,  it  is  sure  to  bring 
the  whole  countryside  together,  in  an  experience  of 
the  New  Year  rising  from  the  grave  of  winter  and  of 
the  divine  Lord  risen  from  the  dead. 

[204] 


RECREATION 

Most  country  communities  have  no  such  celebra- 
tion. In  very  many  the  whole  year  passes  without 
neighbors  meeting  for  a  common  social  experience. 
This  is  why  people  move  to  the  city,  because  every 
city,  great  and  small,  has  in  the  course  of  the  year 
some  events  which  bring  all  the  people  to  the  curb- 
stone. Country  life  has  few  such  times  and  therefore 
it  is  dull,  because  the  richest  experience  of  mankind 
is  the  experience  of  common  social  joy.  The  best 
recreation  is  acquaintance  and  conversation.  The 
farmer's  son  spends  many  hours  in  silence.  He 
wants  someone  to  help  him  to  talk>  and  to  talk  irnto 
some  purpose. 

The  Fourth  of  July  is  celebrated  in  Rock  Creek, 
an  Ilhnois  community,  by  a  "wild  animal  show.'* 
Instead  of  explosives,  which  are  discouraged,  the 
boys  of  the  community  bring  together  in  small 
cages  their  animal  pets.  The  boys  are  encouraged 
to  make  small  carts  for  the  transportation  of  their 
pets,  and  the  crowning  event  of  the  day  is  the  pro- 
cession of  these  carts,  in  an  open  place,  before  the 
great  dinner,  at  which  the  countryside  sits  down  to- 
gether. 

Recreation  in  the  country,  above  all,  should  revolve 
about  something  to  eat.  The  farmer's  business  is 
to  feed  the  world,  and  country  people  love,  above  all 
things,  the  social  joy  of  eating.  Farmers'  wives  are 
the  best  cooks  and  the  country  household  perpetuates 
its  culinary  traditions.  Especially  does  a  permanent 
farm  population  enrich  its  household  tradition  with 

[205] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

delicious  recipes  and  beautiful  customs  of  the  table. 
Thanksgiving  Day  should  be  the  great  celebration 
of  the  round  year  in  the  country.  What  a  comment 
upon  the  country  community  it  is  that  so  few  com- 
munities in  the  country  meet  together,  in  response 
to  the  President's  proclamation  of  thanksgiving,  to 
express  gratitude  unto  the  bountiful  Father  of  all. 

The  country  church  should  minister  to  country 
people  in  some  effective  gathering  of  all  the  country- 
side. A  most  fruitful  method  now  in  use  is  a  corn 
judging  contest  for  the  boys. 

In  the  Middle  West  the  Corn  Clubs  for  boys  have 
had  an  extraordinary  value,  and  in  the  South,  also, 
the  Farmer's  Co-operative  Demonstration  Work 
has  made  use  of  the  boys  in  the  country  community 
for  demonstrating  progressive  methods  on  the  farm. 
Thanksgiving  Day  can  be  prepared  for  in  the  preced- 
ing spring,  and  the  boys  and  girls  who  have  managed 
a  garden,  or  half  acre,  through  the  summer  can  make 
their  showing  at  that  time.  Such  a  competitive 
showing  in  the  country,  in  the  production  of  the 
staple  crop,  is  sure  to  bring  together  the  whole  country- 
side. 

The  local  history  of  the  country  community  is  a 
frutiful  source  of  recreation.  Farmers  look  to  the 
past,  and  even  the  new  people  in  the  country  are 
keen  to  hear  the  story  of  the  old  settlers  and  of  the 
early  pioneers.  Nothing  is  of  greater  value  in  devel- 
oping and  refreshing  country  life  than  to  enrich  it  by 
celebrating  its  early  history. 

[£06] 


RECREATION 

Recreation  is  essential  to  the  moral  life  of  any 
people.  It  is  the  constructive  method  of  making 
individuals  into  good  citizens.  Especially  valuable 
is  it  as  a  means  of  educating  the  young  people  and 
the  working  p>eople  of  the  community.  The  craving 
for  this  social  training  and  ethical  exp>erience  drives 
many  out  of  the  country  community.  Conversely, 
training  in  social  morality  is  to  be  undertaken  es- 
pecially by  the  church,  which  possesses  the  conscience 
of  the  country  community.  This  training  is  ex- 
pressed in  the  one  phrase;  the  promotion  of  recre- 
ation. 


[807] 


XIV 

COMMON  WORSHIP 

THE  worship  of  God  is  an  expresssion  of  the 
consciousness  of  kind.  "This  consciousness 
is  a  social  and  a  socializing  force,  sometimes 
exceedingly  delicate  and  subtle  in  its  action;  some- 
times turbulent  and  all-powerful.  Assuming  end- 
lessly varied  modes  of  prejudice  and  of  preposses- 
sion, of  liking  and  disliking,  it  tends  always  to  re- 
construct and  dominate  every  mode  of  association 
and  every  social  grouping."  ^  This  description  by 
Professor  Giddings  is  so  near  to  a  description  of 
worship,  that  it  is  startling. 

Of  all  human  acts  of  the  conscientious  man  wor- 
ship is  the  most  highly  symbolic.  They  who  worship 
are  alike,  and  in  their  likeness  are  unlike  to  others. 
It  is  an  expression  of  their  awareness  of  resemblance 
and  of  difference.  The  definitions  of  consciousness 
of  kind,  as  a  sociological  process,  go  a  long  way  to 
explain  without  further  comment,  both  the  strength 
and  the  weakness  of  the  churches  in  America. 

The  churches  have  to  struggle  with  a  narrow  and 
small  social  horizon.    Few  people  are  so  conscious 

1  "Descriptive  and  Historical  Sociology,"  by  Prof.  Franklin  H.  Gid- 
dings, p.  275. 

[208] 


COMMON   WORSHIP 

of  their  kinship  with  all  others  in  their  community 
that  they  desire  those  others  to  worship  with  them. 
The  sense  of  unlikeness  to  others  is,  unfortunately, 
as  strong  in  their  feelings  as  the  sense  of  likeness  unto 
their  own.  In  the  American  community  with  many 
newcomers,  and  some  foreigners,  this  sense  of  unlike- 
ness is  natural.  It  is  not  to  be  wondered  that  men 
should  think  themselves  more  like  unto  their  old 
neighbors  than  unto  the  new.  It  is  not  surprising 
that  with  new  economic  processes  men  should 
ignore  their  unity  with  those  who  co-operate  with 
them  in  getting  a  living,  and  should  be  conscious  of 
their  unity  with  those  whose  living  comes  in  the  same 
form.  As  a  result,  we  have  working  men's  churches 
and  "rich  men's  clubs,"  "college  churches,"  "stu- 
dent pastors,"  churches  which  minister  to  old  f  amiUes, 
and  new  chapels  built  by  tenant  farmers.  But  these 
phases  of  worship  are  peculiar  to  the  times  of  transi- 
tion in  which  we  live.  The  immaturity  of  our  ec- 
nomic  processes,  and  the  greater  immaturity  of  our 
economic  knowledge,  explain  the  failure  of  worship- 
ing people  to  assemble  by  communities;  but  the  pro- 
cess which  assembles  men  of  kindred  mind  to  worship 
together  now  is  capable  of  bringing  men  together  in 
larger  wholes. 

The  spirit  of  federation  is  in  the  air.  The  longing 
for  religious  unity  is  a  response  to  the  stimuli  of 
common  experience  in  the  same  locality.  Men  who 
meet  throughout  the  week,  if  they  worship  at  all, 
discover  a  desire  to  worship  together.    The  coming 

[  209 1 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

of  great  occasions  and  the  celebrations  of  anni- 
versaries, train  them  in  some  common  assemblies. 
I  remember  how  the  tidings  of  the  death  of  Presi- 
dent McEjnley  brought  together  all  the  people  of 
the  community  in  an  act  of  worship.  Their  response 
to  a  profound  sense  of  danger  was  a  community 
response,  and  the  church  which  was  prompt  to  open 
its  doors,  found  men  of  all  faiths  within. 

At  a  recent  meeting  of  the  National  Body  of  one 
of  the  greatest  Protestant  churches,  proceedings 
were  halted  by  the  moderator,  who  read  a  telegram 
announcing  the  friendly  action  of  another  religious 
body.  This  action  looked  toward  union  of  the  two 
denominations.  It  was  a  response  to  overtures  from 
the  body  there  in  session.  Instantly  the  whole 
assembly  sprang  up,  applauding  and  cheering,  and 
led  by  a  clear,  musical  voice,  broke  out  in  a  hymn. 
That  hymn  is  profoundly  sociological  in  its  language, 
and  its  use  is  increasing  among  Christian  people. 
It  expresses  that  worship  which  is  a  consciousness 
of  kind.     Its  words  are 

■  Blest  be  the  tie  that  binds 
Our  hearts  in  Christian  love: 
The  fellowship  of  kindred  minds 
Is  like  to  that  above. 

Before  our  Father's  throne 

We  pour  our  ardent  prayers; 
Our  fears,  our  hopes,  our  aims,  are  one. 

Our  comforts  and  our  cares. 

[210] 


COMMON    WORSHIP 

We  share  our  mutual  woes. 

Our  mutual  burdens  bear. 
And  often  for  each  other  6ows 

The  sympathizing  tear. 

When  we  asunder  part. 

It  gives  us  inward  pain: 
But  we  shall  still  be  joined  in  heart. 

And  hope  to  meet  again. 

It  would  be  hard  to  find  a  member  of  a  Protestant 
church  in  America,  among  the  older  denominations, 
who  does  not  know  these  words,  and  is  not  accus- 
tomed to  use  them  in  response  to  the  stimuU  of  kin- 
ship with  other  Protestant  Christians. 

The  consciousness  of  kind  is  an  awareness  of  dif- 
ferences and  resemblances.  It  is  a  finding  of  one's 
self  among  those  to  whom  one  is  like,  and  an  aversion 
to  those  unto  whom  one  is  not  like.  Worship  is  an 
expression  of  this  common  likeness.  It  is  an  enjoy- 
ment of  fellowship. 

The  experience  of  worship  is  impossible  in  an  at- 
mosphere of  difference.  This  is  a  reason  for  the 
cleavage  of  denominations,  and  the  splitting  of  con- 
gregations. Without  this  separating,  men  could 
not  enjoy  the  uniting,  and  without  the  aversion, 
men  could  not  taste  the  sweets  of  fellowship. 

This  brings  us  very  near  to  the  sacred  experiences 
in  which  men  find  God.  A  very  early  chapter  in  the 
Bible  describes  God  as  the  "Friend"  of  a  man.  In 
the  succeeding  pages  he  becomes  the  King,  the  Priest, 
the  Prophet,  and  the  Father  of  men.    In  every  one 

12111 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

of  them  the  mind  of  the  worshiper  has  expressed  a 
profound  sense,  that  God  is  found  by  the  soul  in 
society.  Herbert  Spencer  has  insisted  that  all  re- 
Ugion  is  ancestor  worship,  that  is,  it  grows  out  of  the 
family  group. 

Simmel  teaches  that  religion  is  the  resultant  of  the 
reactions  of  the  individual  with  his  group  fellows, 
and  with  the  group  as  a  whole.  Christian  folk  are 
accustomed  to  express  this  by  calling  one  another 
"brothers"  and  "sisters,"  meaning  clearly  that 
religion  is  a  social  experience. 

This  is  not  the  place  for  extended  biblical  inter- 
pretation, but  I  am  convinced  that  the  whole  course 
of  scripture  will  testify  to  this,  that  in  the  peaceful, 
continuing,  social  unities  men  have  found  God,  and 
in  the  differences,  in  their  group  conflicts,  in  their 
wars,  and  in  the  oppositions  to  their  enemies,  there 
has  been  found  no  religious  experience.  That  is, 
such  conflict  has  intensified  unity,  and  the  resulting 
unity  has  been  ever  richer  in  religion :  but  the  thoughts 
for  God  have  come  forth  clothed  always  in  terms  and 
titles  of  fellowship,  unity  and  kinship. 

In  country  communities  this  principle  explains  the 
divisions  and  the  unities  of  religious  life.  In  many 
towns,  the  Presbyterian  church,  for  instance,  is  the 
church  of  the  old  settler  and  the  earlier  farmers. 
A  new  denomination  has  come  in  with  the  tenants 
and  the  invaders.  That  is,  men  have  found  it  im- 
possible to  worship  in  a  constant  experience  of  differ- 
ence.    It  is  true  that  their  difference  is  an  element 

[212] 


COMMON   WORSHIP 

in  their  religion,  because  the  consciousness  of  differ- 
ence is  an  element  in  the  consciousness  of  kind. 

In  the  Southern  States,  the  white  slave-holders 
worshiped,  before  the  war,  in  the  same  congregations 
with  their  negro  slaves.  They  were  conscious  of  the 
plantation  group,  and  of  the  economic  unity  with 
their  work-people.  When  emancipation  came  and 
the  slaves  were  made  free,  they  must  needs  worship 
apart;  and  today,  throughout  the  whole  South,  the 
negro  churches  have  been  erected  to  express  the 
consciousness  of  kind,  both  on  the  part  of  the  white 
and  of  the  black. 

If  this  argument  has  force,  it  goes  to  prove  that 
religion  is,  in  a  small  community,  the  strongest  organ- 
izing force.  The  seeking  after  God  requires  as  a 
vehicle  the  consciousness  of  likeness  and  difference. 
It  can  only  proceed  along  those  Hnes. 

The  earnest  desire  of  many  common  folk  to  know 
God  is  a  working  force,  which  follows  the  cleavage 
of  social  classification.  The  churches  become  ex- 
pressions of  social  forms.  In  the  country  particu- 
larly, where  life  is  simpler  and  changes  are  slower, 
the  church  becomes  an  almost  infallible  index  of  the 
social  condition  of  the  people. 

The  duty,  then,  of  the  religious  worker,  and  the 
task  of  the  prophet  and  the  seer,  is  to  enlarge  the 
consciousness  of  kind.  Worship  is  to  be  placed  on 
a  larger  plane.  Americans  must  be  taught  to  see 
their  unity  with  immigrants.  Owners  of  land  must 
be  made  to  recognize  that  they  are  one  with  their 

[213] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE    COMMUNITY 

tenants.'  The  employer  must  be  shown  that  his 
alliances  are  with  those  who  help  him  to  get  his 
living.  At  once,  when  this  task  is  put  before  us,  we 
see  the  futility  of  the  ideals  of  our  time.  Church 
workers  and  other  teachers  have  played  up  before 
the  eyes  of  the  people  those  ideals  which  separate 
men  into  artificial  classes.  The  consciousness  of 
kind  has  been  a  consciousness  of  money  and  conscious- 
ness of  belonging  to  old  families,  or  a  consciousness 
of  the  ideals  of  higher  education.  A  great  many 
American  families  live  in  the  ideal  of  sending  their 
boys  and  girls  to  college.  This  leads  them  to  feel 
a  difference  between  themselves  and  the  larger 
number  of  people  who  do  not  care  for  higher  educa- 
tion, and  who  discover  no  energies  in  themselves 
that  move  on  the  path  of  learning.  The  result  is 
that  their  worship  is  narrow;  churches  become  cul- 
ture clubs :  the  preachers  are  exponents  of  literature : 
the  service  of  worship  is  a  liturgy  of  esthetic  pleasure. 

The  true  consciousness  of  kind  must  be  economic 
and  social.  There  is  no  escape  from  this  for  religious 
people.  They  must  go  deep  down  to  the  unities  with 
men  who  co-operate  with  them  in  getting  a  living. 
The  Pittsburgh  mill  owner  has  no  other  unity  by 
which  he  can  find  himself  at  one  with  his  foreign 
born  mill-hand,  than  the  fact  that  he  and  the  mill- 
hand  are  fellow  workers  in  the  mill. 

What  other  bond  of  union  is  there  between  the 
farm  landlord  and  the  farm  tenant?  They  have 
no  common  idealism.   The  one  reads  books,  the  other 

[214] 


COMMON   WORSHIP 

does  not.  The  one  sends  his  son  to  college,  the  other 
sends  his  into  the  stable  and  the  field.  The  one 
is  enjoying  a  life  of  leisure  and  his  hands  are  clean; 
the  other  sweats,  saves,  and  produces,  in  soiled 
clothing,  and  with  hard,  coarse  hands.  They  have 
only  one  basis  of  unity,  namely,  that  they  co-operate 
in  tilling  the  soil,  and  in  the  producing  of  food  and  raw 
materials.  The  teacher,  or  preacher,  who  attempts 
in  this  case  to  escape  the  economic  unity,  will  find 
no  other. 

The  trouble  with  most  of  the  ideals  which  express 
themselves  in  diversified  worship,  is  that  they  are 
peculiar  to  the  life  of  leisure,  they  are  a  part  of  "the 
leisure  class  standard."  Many  teachers  and 
preachers  reiterate  similar  demands  which  can  only 
be  responded  to  by  people  who  do  not  have  to  work. 

From  this  leisure  class  standard  our  ideals  must 
be  changed  to  the  standard  of  work,  and  the  man  who 
has  vision  is  he  who  shall  see  the  economic,  the  in- 
dustrial unities,  and  who  with  compelling  voice, 
will  call  men  together  to  worship  in  a  new  conscious- 
ness of  kind. 

Ministers  in  the  country  are  feeling  this  very 
deeply.  The  pastor  who  ministers  to  a  whole  com- 
munity, boasts  of  it.  He  realizes  he  is  serving  a 
true  social  unit.  This  is  the  joy  of  many  country 
churches  which  might  be  named,  and  the  lack  of  it 
is  the  blight  of  many  other  country  communities. 
It  must  be  clearly  born  in  mind,  however,  that  the 
church  can  not  organize  a  unity  that  is  apart  from 

[215] 


EVOLUTION   OF   THE   COMMUNITY 

the  life  of  men.  Religion  is  the  expression  of  social 
realities.  There  can  be  no  ** federation"  of  those 
who  are  not  conscious  of  their  likeness  and  of  their 
resemblances.  This  means  that  the  religious  teach- 
ing of  days  to  come  must  be  a  teaching  of  the  real 
unities  of  mankind.  For  in  these  true  bonds  of 
union  men  are  brought  together.  The  efforts  to 
assemble  them  in  artificial  bonds,  however  ideal, 
will  be  futile. 


216] 


SELECTED  BIBLIOGRAPHY 


BOOKS 

The  Conservation  of  Natural  Resources  in  the  United  States, 

Chas.  R.  Van  Hise,  The    Macmillan 

The  Rural  Life  Problem  of  the  United  States, 
Sir  Horace  Plunkett, 
^  Principles  of  Rural  Economics, 

Thomas  Nixon  Carver, 
,  The  Country  Life  Movement  in  the  United  States, 
L.  H.  Bailey, 
Ireland  in  the  New  Century, 
Sir  Horace  Plunkett, 
^The  American  Rural  School, 
Harold  W.  Foght, 
The  Country  Town.     A  Study  of  Rural  Evolution, 


Co. 


The  Macmillan  Co. 


Ginn  and  Company 


The  Macmillan  Co. 


E.  P.  Dutton 


The  Macmillan  Co. 


The  Baker  &  Taylor  Co. 


Wilbert  L.  Anderson, 
Descriptive  and  Historical  Sociology, 

Franklin  H.  Giddings, 
l^Rural  Denmark  and  Its  Lessons, 

H.  Rider  Haggard, 
Quaker  Hill,  A  Sociological  Study, 

Warren  H.  Wilson, 
Youth, 

G.  Stanley  Hall, 
The  Presbyterian  Church  in  the  United  States, 

Robert  E.  Thompson, 
Chapters  in  Rural  Progress, 

Kenyon  L.  Butterfield,  The  University  of  Chicago  Press 

The  Coimtry  Church  and  the  Rural  Problem, 

Kenyon  L.  Butterfield,  The  University  of  Chicago  Press 

The  Story  of  John  Frederick  Oberhn, 

Augustus  Field  Beard,  The  Pilgrim  Press 

The  Church  of  the  Open  Country, 

Warren  H.  Wilson,  Missionary  Education  Movement 


The  Macmillan  Co. 

Longmans,  Green  &  Co. 

Privately  printed 

D.  Appleton  &  Co. 

Chas.  Scribner's  Sons 


[217] 


SELECTED    BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The  Day  of  the  Country  Church, 

J.  O.  Ashenhurst.  Fimk  &  Wagnalls  Co. 

The  Distribution  of  Wealth, 

John  Bates  Clark,  The  Maomillan  Co. 

Abticles  Refebbed  to  in  the  Text 

The  American  Journal  of  Sociology,  March,  1911, 

Statement  by  John  L.  Gillin. 
The  American  Journal  of  Sociology,  March,  1911, 

The  Drift  of  the  City  in  Relation  to  the  Rural  Problem, 

John  M.  Gillette. 
Modem  Methods  in  the  Coimtry  Church, 

Matthew  B.  McNutt,  Missionary  Education  Movement 

A  Method  of  Making  a  Social  Svu-vey  in  a  Riu-al  Community, 

C.  J.  Galpin,  University  of  Wisconsin 

Circular  of  information  No.  29 
Bulletins  of  International  Institute  of  Agriculture, 

Rome,  Italy 
The  Political  Science  Quarterly,  December,  1910, 

The  Agrarian  Changes  in  the  middle  West, 

J.  B.  Ross 


[«18] 


INDEX 


Abandoned  country  churches. 
Absentee  landlords,  32-39 
Academy, — Old  New  England, 
Addams,  Jane,  191 
Adult  Bible  Class,  134 
Agee,  Prof.  Alva,  105 
Agriculture,  teaching  of,  167 
Amish,  74 

Amusement,  problem  of,  84 
Anabaptist,  72 
Anderson,  Wilbert  L.,  102 
Anti-Saloon  League,  183 
Apples,  marketing  of,    175 
Augustine,  Saint,  82 
Austerity,  57 

Bailey,  L.  H.,  SO 
"Bees",  203 
BeUona,  N.  Y.  56 
Boll  weevil,  143 
Bone,  R.  E.,  86 
Braddock,  Rev.  J.  S.,  68 
Breach  of  contract,  174 
Breadwinner,  type,  113 
Butterfield,  Kenyon  L.,  137 

Cassdton,  N.  D.,  42 
Centralized  school,  163 
Chaffee,  farm,    43 
Chester  County,  Pa.,  124 
Chesterton,  Gilbert  K.,  115 
Christmas  play,  203 


126      Church,  Budget,  138 

Envelope  system,  139 
25  Financial  system,  130 

Records,  172 
Clark,  John  Bates,  80,  111 
College  athletics,  193 
Columbus,  Christopher,  112 
Community  center,  104 
Consciousness  of  kind,  208,  213 
Com  Clubs,  206 
Country  Fair,  promoted,  17 
Country  Life  Commission,  171 
Cranberry,  N.  J.,  church  at,  27 
Crete,  Nebraska,  86 

Danish  Folk  Schools,  52,  169 

Delaware,  produce  exchanges,  154 

Demonstration  work,  206 

Denmark,  51, 147 

Desmoulin,  96 

Diminishing  returns,  law  of,  88,110 

Donation,  system,  27 

Dunkers,  58,  67 

Du  Page  Church,  106 

Eliot,  Ex-President  of  Harvard,  137 
Endowment  of  churches,  136 
Exploitation  of  land,  82-33,  123, 
124 

Family  group,  19 
Shrinkage  of,  124 

[219] 


INDEX 


Fanu  laborers,  22 
Federation  of  churches,  135,  209 
Foght,  Harold  W.,  97, 160 
Fourth  of  July  celebration,  205 

Galesburg,  HI.,  201 
Galpin,  Prof.  C.  J.,  94 
Giddings,  Prof.  Franklin  H.,     208 
Gill, Rev.  CO.,  195 
Gillette,  Prof.  John  M.,  188 
Gillin,  Prof.,  57,  58,  67 
Greeley,  Horace,  108 
Group  system,  10,  11, 12 
Grundtvig,  Bishop,  51, 53, 169 
Gulick,  Dr.  Luther  H.,  197 

Haggard,  H.  Rider,  147 

Hanover,  N.  J.,  156 

Hays,  WiUet  M.,  91 

Hernando,  Mississippi,  105 

Holidays,  celebration  of,  204 

Homestead  act,  34 

Hood  River  Valley,  Oregon,  fruit 

growers,    176 
Hormell,  Dr.  W.  H.,  88 

Illinois,  126 

Survey  of,  190 
Immigrants,  in  country  districts, 

123 
Indiana,  survey  of,  190 
Ireland,  Christian  Brothers,  52 

Co-operative  organizations,  147- 
151 

Country  Life  Movement,  80 

John  Swaney  Consolidated  School, 
165-166 


Kentucky,  co-operative  organiza- 
tions, 152 
Survey  of,  190 

Lancaster  County,  Pa.,  67 
Land  values,  34 
Leadership,  187 
Lewiston,  Pa.,  198 

McNab,  111.,  166 

McNutt,  Rev.  Matthew  B.,  86, 106 
Marginal  man,  113 
Massachusetts  communities,  96 
Mennonites,  72 
Middle  Creek  Church,  58 
Minimum  salary,  161 
Missouri,  survey  of,  190 
Money  crop,  95 
Mormons,  57,  62-78 
Morrison,  Rev.  T.  Maxwell,  56 
Mountain  community,  4 
Mountaineers,  6,  8,  16 

New    England    Country    Church 

Asso..  137 
New  York  Central  R.  R.,  177 

Oberammergau,  83 

Oberlin,  John  Frederick,  14 

Oblong  meeting,  71,  172 

Ohio,  counties  less  productive,  101 

Ottumwa,  Iowa,  88 

Over  churching,  26, 145, 146 

Palatinates,  72 
Pastor,  need  of,  13 
Passion  Play,  83 
Penn,  William,  72 


[220] 


INDEX 


Penn  Yan,  N.  Y.,  40 
Pennsylvania  Germans,  57,  62-78 
Pennsylvania,  survey  of,  190 
Planters,  south,  18 
Playground,  98 

Playground  movement,  134,  196 
Plunkett,  Sir  Horace,  51,  147 
Polk,  Rev.  Samuel,  54 
Poor,  ministry  to,  1 15 
Protestantism,  118 

Quaker  Hill,  70,  94,  155 
Quaker  meeting,  McNab,  168 
Quakers,  70, 197, 204 

Rankin,  David,  41 
Recreation,  importance  of,  139,194 
Retired  farmers,  36-38 
Retirement    from   farm,    process 

described,  125 
Revivals,  7, 8, 9 
Riis,  Jacob,  87 
Rock  Creek,  111.,  156, 164. 205 
Ross,  Prof.  J.  B.,  2, 21, 29, 32, 184 
Rural  evangelism,  131 
Rural  exodus,  87, 97 
Rural  free  delivery,  128 

Sag  Harbor,  L.  I.,  201 
Sage,  Mrs.  Russell,  201 
Schenck,  Norman  C,  4 
School,  country,  23, 85,  60, 159 
Scientific  farming,  48 
Scotch-Irish,  80, 57,  62-78 
Simmel,  212 

Slave-holding  churches,  28 
Smith,  Adam.  5 
&nitb,  John,  112 


Socialism,  110 
Social  service,  110,  XII 
Spencer,  Herbert,    212 
Store,  country,  22,  94 
Sunday  Schools,  131, 134 
Swaney,  John,  86 

Tard,  Gabriel,  59 
Teachers,  training  of,  161 
Team  play,  ethical  value,  99 
Telephone,  rural,  128, 190 
Temperance  movement,  46,  117, 

183 
Tenant  farmers,  35 

Tenanls'Tease,  40 
Thompson,  R.  E.,  65 
Theological    seminaries,    119-120 
Trolley,  inter-urban,  128 
Types,  economic.  3 

Utility,  initial,  108 
Marginal,  109 

Van  Alstyne,  Edward,  177 
Vote  selling,  179 

Washington  County,  Pa.,  124 
Waterloo,    Iowa,    community 

church,  68 
Wealth,  conservation  of,  47 
West  Nottingham,  Md.,  church  at, 

54 
Winnebago,  111.,  58 

Yoimg  Men's  Christian  Associa- 
tion, 134, 194 
Yoimg  People's  Societies,  28 


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